MADE AGAIN

Made Again was cobbled together in an approach which takes the strongest aspects of both Reel to Real and The Thieving Magpie. Like the latter, it's a two-disc affair which includes a complete concept album performance on disc 2 (it's Brave this time), like the former, disc 1 is structured such that the first half is from one gig and the second half is from another, meaning that it flows together better than Thieving Magpie's rather fragmentary first disc.

Disc 1 is a bit of a mixed bag; Seasons End is rather under-represented, and whilst Easter is a fine song from it to pick Hooks In You has never won me over. In the first half, Holidays In Eden is heavily represented, though I think the lack of This Town/The Rake's Progress/100 Nights deprives listeners of a highlight of the Holidays-era live experience. On the second half, the inclusion (yet again) of Kayleigh/Lavender, whilst it would be appropriate for an album reproducing a complete concert, in this case means decent H-era songs are crowded out, though at least there's some good picks from Afraid of Sunlight there. The quality of the recording feels a bit of a step down from the standards applied to, say, The Thieving Magpie, though I'm not sure whether that's a factor of this not having had a remaster as recently as Magpie has or EMI simply not putting as much effort into recording Marillion live as they did during the Fish era.

On disc 2, I'd actually say the performance of Brave here is much better than the performance of Misplaced Childhood from The Thieving Magpie - in the live context the band compensate for the lack of pitch-perfect studio production by investing more energy into the songs, creating an angrier and more emotionally forceful runthrough of the material. The enthusiasm of the crowd for the album is palpable, with the audience sounding more enthusiastic than any audience I've heard on Hogarth-era material from the Seasons End and Holidays In Eden tours, and the band's ability to recreate pieces such as the schizophrenic Goodbye to All That onstage is a joy to listen to. On the other hand, if you've heard the studio album, you've heard this already to a large extent.

On the whole, I'd give this one three stars. Were I basing this solely on disc 1, I'd give it two and a half stars for the first half (plenty of complete Holidays-era live albums are available) and three and a half for the second half (the Afraid of Sunlight tour isn't represented at all on the second Official Bootleg boxed set, so this is the only EMI-supported release of live material from that era), whereas I'd give the second disc a strong three and a half stars since despite EMI not putting much effort into the packaging and production, it's still the best available recording of the complete Brave album from the Brave tour. (There's another version on the second Official Bootleg box, but here the entirety of the Brave performance is contained on one disc - plus this one just plain sounds better.)