MARBLES IN THE PARK

Marillion put out a fairly large quantity of live albums, perhaps because they can be produced comparatively cheaply - not too cheaply, of course, you still need to do an actual live show and have all the associated expenses there, and producing a nice-sounding live recording requires a bit more effort still, but in general if you're already putting on the live show, recording it isn't that huge of an extra expense in these modern days and distributing that recording is even easier.

As a band who have embraced an independent existence ever since their pioneering crowd-funding efforts proved that they didn't really need to be tied to a record company at all, it obviously makes sense to have lots of live releases available - if you have a passionate fanbase, a core of which will buy as many live albums as you put out, why the hell not get some extra long tail income out of those live shows?

At the same time, this has ended up leading to something of a glut; if you like the band so much you'll get every live release they offer, that doesn't matter so much, but if you're more discerning it can be hard to pick out which live releases to try out. One of the reasons their regular Marillion Weekend fan conventions yield so many live albums is that they like to make the set lists for them a little bit special, perhaps to help this, and one of the recurring gimmicks is the Friday night where they play a studio album from their back catalogue in its entirety (and perhaps add some extra songs for the encore).

That's what you get here, with a 2015 rendition of Marbles (in its full 2CD configuration.) That's fine, but if you prefer the precision and polish of a studio album... well, the studio album is widely available. If you dig live Marillion, they've played the best songs on here a hell of a lot of the years and released a great swathe of live versions, including entire live run-throughs of Marbles (in its 1CD and 2CD configurations) for that matter. The band are alright here, but the live set doesn't quite come to life for me, and I am not sure whether it's because the band come across as jaded or I'm just jaded; you can only hear so many live versions of Neverland before they all start to blend together, you know?