SEASONS END LIVE

By 2009, the "Friday Night Live" feature at the Marillion weekend conventions - at which the band would perform an entire album from their back catalogue from start to finish - had become a time-honoured tradition, and the band kept it up with this energetic and boisterous rendition of the Seasons End album. I think Seasons End lends itself better to being played from start to finish in this manner, mainly because every single track on the album is a really neat live track - and the band clearly love each of them, as do the audience. (Check out, for instance, the wonderful sing-along on Easter.)

The performance also included the two great B-sides from this era (The Bell In the Sea and The Release), and on the second disc there's also the encore of tracks from Happiness Is the Road - presumably the band did that because the other two show concepts for the 2009 convention didn't include many Happiness songs and they wanted to give the convention attendees a chance to hear a decent number of tracks from the still-new album.

Overall, it's a really great little set which will appeal to anyone who loves the original studio album. That said, it should be bourne in mind that the Friday Live In Montreal set is essentially the same setlist, merely at a different performance (by 2009 the Marillion Weekends were so big the band were hosting several in the same year dotted around the world), so if you already own that one you might want to ponder whether you really want two different performances of the same set list. On top of that, the reliance on audience sing-alongs seems at points to be covering for H's voice not quite being 100% on the evening, though that might be a recording quality thing.