Marillion – 10 of the best

1. Forgotten Sons

Marillion were still defining their sound when they recorded their first album, 1983’s Script for a Jester’s Tear. While they’d already got crude pastiches of Supper’s Ready out of their system, the dramatic album closer still displays strong echoes of Genesis’s The Knife and Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb. The tale of a young soldier caught up in the Troubles in Northern Ireland remains an intense and moving piece that transcends its rather obvious influences. In archetypal neo-progressive fashion, it builds through multiple sections, with a Psalm 23/Lords’ Prayer spoken-word part backed by a staccato riff stolen from Gustav Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War, and a powerful closing section demonstrating Fish’s growing powers as a lyricist. A high water mark of early 80s neo-prog, it’s a song that’s far more than the sum of its parts.

2. Incubus

Marillion’s second album, Fugazi, saw them leaving behind the notion that they were merely a pastiche of Gabriel-era Genesis, with a dense, layered sound that was far more their own. Driven by a propulsive riff, Incubus is a highlight, a song about revenge porn written three decades before it became a regular news item. While the lyrics are perhaps a little overblown, Fish’s half-sung, half-ranted vocal gets disturbingly into the role of the jealous ex-lover of a celebrity. It still features regularly in Fish’s live sets as a solo artist.

3. Warm Wet Circles/That Time of the Night

Marillion hit the big time with the intense and personal-concept album Misplaced Childhood, which spawned their big hit single, Kayleigh. When it came to the follow-up, Clutching at Straws, they took a sharp left turn. Gone were the sprawling, serpentine song structures and opaque, overcooked lyrics, in favour of a more focused songwriting approach that would set the template for Fish’s later solo career. I know treating these two as one song is cheating a bit, but they work as one continuous piece, with Steve Rothery’s sublime solo forming the bridge between. When performed live, either by Fish or by the current incarnation of Marillion, they’re almost always played together.

4. Seasons End

Just when Marillion seemed poised to conquer the world, the unthinkable happened. Burned out by constant touring without downtime and with divisions over musical direction beginning to surface, Fish left the band. Rather than trying to find a soundalike, they recruited the relatively unknown Steve Hogarth and used his very different vocal approach as an opportunity to reinvent themselves. Seasons End was the result. The title track is both soaring and anthemic, yet it is one of the saddest in their songbook. It is one of those songs that never fails to bring a lump to the throat. A perfect marriage of Hogarth’s vocals and Rothery’s lyrical lead guitar.

5. The Great Escape

After the singles from 1991’s pop-oriented Holidays in Eden failed to make the charts, the band launched a follow-up in 1994 with Brave, a dark and intense concept album with no obvious single, which remains a firm fan-favourite. Inspired by a news report of a girl with amnesia found wandering on the Severn Bridge, the narrative imagines a life story that might have bought someone to that place. The emotional climax of the album is the penultimate song, with musical motifs repeated from earlier in the album. The point when it changes gears is one of those moments. When they played the album in full at the 2013 fan convention, The Great Escape prompted a five-minute standing ovation.

6. Out of This World

Marillion have a thing about death and water. It’s a recurring theme that goes right back to Chelsea Monday, from their debut. Out of This World comes from the album Afraid of Sunlight, whose songs reflect the flipside of fame. It tells the story of Donald Campbell’s fatal attempt at the world water speed record in Bluebird in 1967, and the song itself was to inspire the recovery of the wreck of Bluebird from the depths of Coniston Water. This one’s a showcase for Steve Hogarth’s vocals, and aside from Steve Rothery’s magnificent solo the song owes far more to Talk Talk than it does to Pink Floyd or Genesis.

7. Man of a Thousand Faces

While latter-day Marillion are known for their atmospheric epics, sometimes they do write straightforward pop songs, and this one, from 1997’s This Strange Engine is one of their best, a semi-acoustic song with 12-string guitar and a delightful piano solo from Mark Kelly. By this point in their career they’d been dropped by EMI, and though Man of a Thousand Faces was released as a single, it got no radio airplay and didn’t chart.

8. This Is the 21st Century

Marillion go trip-hop. The 2001 album Anoraknophobia comes from the period when Marillion were experimenting with many different musical ideas and directions in an attempt to avoid repeating their own past, and drew comparisons with the more contemporary sounds of Radiohead and Massive Attack. The album was also hugely significant for the wider music business as the first successfully crowdfunded record, something for which Marillion don’t always get the credit they deserve. This lengthy number was a high spot of the album, with a lyric serving a powerful rebuttal to the reductionist worldview of Richard Dawkins, who allowed no space for the spiritual.

9. Neverland

The late 90s and early years of the new century saw a tension between the more contemporary side of their music and the classic Marillion sound centred on Steve Rothery’s distinctive, overdriven guitar. The sprawling double album version of 2004’s Marbles kept a foot in both camps, balancing lighter reflective songs with the 18-minute epic Ocean Cloud. The album comes to close with the anthemic Neverland, which begins as plaintive piano ballad and ends in a glorious wall of sound, monstrous waves of molten guitar as Steve Rothery duels with Steve Hogarth using his voice as a lead instrument. It’s been a live favourite ever since, with good reason.

10. The New Kings

Most bands who have been around for almost four decades have long since burned out creatively, and if they still tour they’ve largely turned into their own tribute acts. It’s possible that the change of singer just at the point where they reached their creative peak is the secret to their longevity, but whatever the reason, Marillion still have something to say. From the elegiac opening chords onwards, the five-part epic that closes their 16th album, Fear, demonstrates this in spades, a lament for a world screwed over by corrupt self-serving elites. “Do you remember a country that cared for you? / A national anthem you could sing without feeling used or ashamed? / Now we’re living for the new kings”, sings Hogarth as the musical twists and turns show all the strengths of Marillion’s music from the 21st century.