FACT AND FICTION

Twelfth Night's first studio LP saw Geoff Mann mature into his lead singer's position with style, and provides the best studio showcase of the band's intriguing combination of prog rock and New Wave sounds and compositional approaches.

Geoff Mann's idiosyncratic vocal style as a frontman makes this a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it album. He has a highly theatrical approach to things, along with a willingness to tackle deeply uncomfortable lyrical themes - much like Fish in Marillion, who Twelfth Night would regularly co-headline the Marquee with - and it took a while to grow on me, but once I was able to get past it and unpack it I was able to appreciate the album more.

Whilst Geoff famously left the band in order to become a Christian minister, he is able to take in a far broader range of lyrical themes than the simplistic "world is bad, come to Jesus" message that a lot of performatively Christian rock bands manage to; his Christianity here largely emerges in providing an unflinching look at social ills people would rather ignore, and then tying things up with Love Song, an appeal to hope which can certainly have a Christian interpretation but which can also be read more broadly.

Many of the songs on here - the title track, We Are Sane, Creepshow, and Love Song - are all regarded, not incorrectly, as gems in the Twelfth Night portfolio, and this album offers the most crystal-clear presentations of them available. If you wondered where the dark overtones of Marillion's Script For a Jester's Tear came for, it's because they were hanging out with Twelfth Night at the time; Fact and Fiction offers a bleak pit of neo-prog darkness with, thankfully, a light at the end of the tunnel at the end.