BRAVE LIVE 2002

Marillion's weekend extravaganzas for the fans have, since their inauguration in 2002, become a rather handy source of unique and intriguing live albums for the band. After all, with three sets in a row from Friday to Sunday, the band can't just play an ordinary gig each time, so they go out of their way to come up with intriguing and different concepts for each evening - and that lends itself to producing idiosyncratic and unusual live albums which present more than just another live set.

One of the strands running from convention to convention is the "Friday Night Live" spot, where traditionally the band play through one of their classic albums in full. And what better album to kick this series off than Brave? Brave Live 2002 is not just a record of the very first Friday Night Live gig, though; it's also the best full live rendition of the album I have ever heard. Both the versions on Made Again and the Official Bootleg set were decent, but the recording quality this time around is a clear step above those, and on top of that the band perform with five years of familiarity with the material in question under their belt.

The end result is a rendition of the album which is on a par with the studio version at last, though of course this is also the weakness of the release - if you've got the studio version, this doesn't shed much new light on it.