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Marillion are one of those bands I just don’t get.
It’s not that I don’t get their musical intricacies or their enduring success in the face of industry apathy and oh-so-cool music press snobbery. It’s not that I can’t get my head around the fact that they can’t really be defined (hard proggy emotional ambient avant-garde rock with a bit of added funkadelia?).
No. I mean, I don’t get why they aren’t huge.
They know how to write sparkly riffs and soaring soundscapes topped off with a band sound, lyrics and vocals that hit you right here. Their repertoire ranges from ready-made radio hits (demonstrated tonight with The Release and You’re Gone), to story songs that can bring an audience to tears (Runaway had someone a few seats away from me snuffling into a tissue… at least, I hope it was emotion and not the dreaded lurgi…). Their frontman, Steve Hogarth, crackles with charisma and sings with passion and power and faultless precision. The rest of the band are clearly virtuoso musicians. When you see the success of bands like Muse or Radiohead (clearly influenced by Marillion) or Genesis or Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin (clearly influences on them), you just know they could’ve ruled the world. I don’t get it.
But after tonight’s gig at St David’s Hall, I’m glad I don’t get it. If Marillion had become the world-striding stadium act they could’ve been, the audience in Cardiff wouldn’t have been enraptured by the epic 10-minute (but still hugely catchy) new song Be Hard On Yourself from their fan-funded soon-to-be-released album An Hour Before It’s Dawn, or the breath-taking crowd favourite Neverland. Instead, they would probably have been confined to creating hits, feeding the industry monster.
As for an actual review of the show… As a seasoned journalist, I believe it’s always important to remain critically impartial. But it’s hard to be critical of a show that’s this good. It was raw yet faultless; it made you want to dance and cry (not usually at the same time), but most of all it felt as if those of us in the audience had been invited into a secret society of musical brilliance.
So, in a way, this review is a call to anyone who reads it not to give Marillion a go. Call me selfish, but those of us who have discovered their music are quite happy with them as they are, thankyouverymuch. We don’t need them to suddenly become too big to be allowed to write songs like The Party or Easter or The Leavers. So don’t try and catch them on tour or buy their new album when it’s out and for the sake of all that’s good and right with the world, please continue to ignore them.
Review by Craig Hooper
