LESS IS MORE

The sheer beauty of Marillion's acoustic album 'Less Is More' is what makes it a very special entry in their discography, an album that represents one of the most intimate and vulnerable experiences of the band playing stripped-down versions of some deep cuts as well as a few better-known tracks. These heartfelt, at times even improvisational performances, as well as the excellent delivery and production of this project, are among the valued attributes of an album that has been quite misunderstood by many - perhaps some seek within 'Less Is More' that daring and innovative sound, or the genre-defying compositions of the band's iconic albums, while not accounting for the fact that this record is all about the inverse of these principles.

The song selection is rather interesting, as we have eleven new arrangements of songs from 'marillion.com', 'Anoraknophobia' and 'Afraid of Sunlight' among others, as well as one previously unreleased acoustic track called 'It's Not Your Fault', a song with a very lamentable tone; and at the same time, albums like 'Marbles' and 'Holidays in Eden' are not represented here at all, while tracks from 'Brave' and 'Seasons End' are only features ones - all of this goes to show that the tracklist for 'Less Is More' was carefully curated to capture a particular atmosphere, and not to necessarily satiate the fans' desire to hear the most popular songs yet again. Most of the songs on here are quite sorrowful, honest and cathartic, with some particularly noteworthy performances being the ones of 'Interior Lulu', 'The Space...', 'Hard As Love', 'Quartz' and 'If My Heart Were a Ball', the renditions of these songs are very curious and manage to breathe some new life into these otherwise-excellent Marillion songs. But really, the entire collection has a very particular feel to it that has to be "caught" and contemplated, there is a very sincere presentation on these love poems, which most of the songs on here are, and this can be quite powerful when executed as brilliantly and professionally as Marillion do it here.

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