Marbles - Marillion

...a quarter of an hour, Marbles is probably, by some mad fluke, the most commercial album Marillion have made. But not track one. Oh no. The Invisible Man is a fraught, slow-burning, cinematic, prog-rock (there, I've said it) classic that rumbles along for thirteen-and-a-half minutes! So unless you are a devotee of prog-rock it might be best to skip this first time around.

I haven't heard such a creepy opening track since Peter Gabriel's ...
...that you could smash real marbles extremely high in the air with a tennis racket. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down... damaging roofs, killing cats, smashing greenhouses etc. (Don't laugh - it's not funny!) Understandably, his father gave away all young Steven's marbles and so, for him, part of growing up involved losing his marbles...y'see?

Marbles ain't no concept album though, so anyone who is looking for a album like Brave, ... more

"The world's gone mad...and I have lost touch...I shouldn't admit it...but I have..."

...so growls Steve Hogarth at the beginning of 'THE INVISIBLE MAN', as Marillion's thirteenth album gets off to a moody, and slightly menacing start. Despite opening and closing with epics that don't leave you with much change out of a quarter of an hour, Marbles is probably, by some mad fluke, the most commercial album Marillion have made. But not track one. Oh no. The Invisible Man is a fraught, slow-burning, cinematic, prog-rock (there, I've said it) classic that rumbles along for thirteen-and-a-half minutes! So unless you are a devotee of prog-rock it might be best to skip this first time around.

I haven't heard such a creepy opening track since Peter Gabriel's Intruder. To describe it as a cross between Paranoid Android and The Sixth Sense only scratches the surface. By the time Hogarth is screaming "I am perfectly sane" at the end, casual listeners will think he really has lost his marbles. I've heard that his dramatic live performance of this track is a wonder to behold, and I don't doubt it. It is also one of Mark Kelly's finest hours on keyboards.

By the way, I love listening to this with my headphones turned up very, very loud late at night, so if I leave an incoherent comment on one of your reviews it's probably because I'm distracted. Incidentally, if you make the mistake of listening to it in headphones late at night, you may end up jumping out of your skin when the wind rattles your window...

It is impossible to overestimate the contribution of producer Dave Meegan to this album, he adds a cohesion to the album which has often been missing since he last worked with them (on their most acclaimed albums Brave and Afraid of Sunlight in the mid-90's). It's a production which allows the performance of every member of the band to shine through (especially Pete Trewavas on bass). And, appropriately enough, there are no rough edges here at all - everything is as smoothly polished as a glass marble.

It was also Meegan's idea to split the title track into four parts, and use them as interludes along the way. They are nice little ditties (the most memorable being 'MARBLES III' thanks to its made-to-be-a-ring-tone ding-ding-a-ling-ling tune) although the lyrics are somewhat embarrassing at times, being based on a poem Hogarth wrote about an escapade in his youth. Apparently, he and a friend discovered that you could smash real marbles extremely high in the air with a tennis racket. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down... damaging roofs, killing cats, smashing greenhouses etc. (Don't laugh - it's not funny!) Understandably, his father gave away all young Steven's marbles and so, for him, part of growing up involved losing his marbles...y'see?

Marbles ain't no concept album though, so anyone who is looking for a album like Brave, Misplaced Childhood or Clutching At Straws may be disappointed. Picky buggers. People of that persuasion were appalled by the sound of 'YOU'RE GONE' which chugs along U2-style, driven by a 'funky drummer' rhythm track; others just adored the lyrics:

♫ You're gone. As suddenly as you came to me
♫ Like nightfall followed dawn without a day between

♫ You're gone, and heaven cries
♫ A thunderstorm breaks from the northern sky
♫ Chasing you back to the daily grind

What impresses me most about this album is the number of instantly loveable melodies, the sweetest of which is 'ANGELINA'. Featuring a sumptuously mellow guitar solo from Steve Rothery that would make Mark Knopfler jealous, and some achingly gorgeous backing vocals from Carrie Tree (which meld so well it's hard to understand why they didn't make more use of her) it's a lovely song about a late night DJ, inspired by an advertising board for Capital Radio which bore the slogan "Margherita takes requests". Ho ho...

♫ When you've stayed up far too late
♫ If you're life is in a state
♫ Call her at the premium rate
♫ Get into Angelina

♫ Don't touch that dial
♫ Don't go to bed
♫ Don't read a book
♫ Call up instead
♫ 0800 sleepyhead
♫ Get off on Angelina
♫ Lonely mans best friend

'DON'T HURT YOURSELF' is probably the catchiest, most radio-friendly, track Marillion have ever produced, with a nod to the Manic Street Preachers' 'If You Tolerate This...' and a vibrant bassline that's almost as infectious as 'Stuck In The Middle With You'. Hopefully this will be the next song to be thrust into the top ten by the mighty Marillion fanbase - and given airplay it could become one of the sounds of the summer.

I've heard a number of people rave about 'FANTASTIC PLACE', including the reviewer in Classic Rock magazine who described it as the exceptional track on the album: "Grandiose and sad too," he said, "it's tooled out with the kind of Steve Rothery guitar solo that sounds as if it was recorded on a cliff top at sunrise, and it's sung exquisitely by Steve Hogarth." Well, okay, it is exceptional - and on any other Marillion album maybe it would be the stand-out track - but I wonder if he was playing the album with the volume low so that no-one knew he was listening to Marillion? Because in that case the torturously overblown climax might have been the only part of the album that registered on his radar. Don't get me wrong, I do love the first couple of minutes, with Hogarth's mumbling delivery reminiscent (as it is several times on this album) of Paul Buchanan, singer with the Blue Nile; but as it builds and builds, it gets too loud and goes on too long. (Mind you, I feel the same way about Beethoven's 9th Symphony - maybe I'm just a philistine.) To be honest I'm always glad when it's over. Ahhh, but what I'd give for an acoustic version.

It's impossible to describe the awesome 'DRILLING HOLES' without using the 'B' word (the 'B' word that rhymes with 'Eatles'). Remember when the Fab Four were on drugs (allegedly) and making those weird noises you didn't like, with stoned lyrics? Like um...

♫ A man came to drill holes in the afternoon
♫ And by the evening
♫ Most of the afternoon had gone

♫ A girl came to help out in the kitchen
♫ But in the afternoon
♫ We found we were all washed up

♫ The evening arrived
♫ Slightly early like a pygmy
♫ Chewing the wrong kind of leaves

♫ It was just one of those days...

It's like they borrowed Busted's time machine, only instead of going forward to the year 3000 they popped back to 1968...man! Imagine if Paul McCartney had left The Beatles and been replaced by Syd Barrett and you're getting there. A heavy psychedelic cocktail that sticks out like a sore thumb, you will either love it or hate it. Imagine freshly made Marmite in an old 1960's jar, with a psychedelic label, which falls from the sky and smashes through your greenhouse roof. It also has so much birdsong in the background that if I owned a shotgun I'd end up blasting my speakers.

'NEVERLAND' blew me away the first time I heard it, although the echoing vocals in the second half took some getting used to. It starts off like a(nother bloody) Coldplay piano ballad, but once Steve Hogarth starts singing ("When the darkness takes me over...") you know you are in for something special. Throw in Trewavas's throbbing bassline, Rothery at his majestic best on guitar, and the odd crashing piano chord à la Judie Tzuke's 'Stay With Me Till Dawn', and this is melodic, symphonic rock at its best.
But instead of releasing it as a single, the silly buggers are giving it away because it's one of the eight tracks on the free Crash Course sampler they send out to anyone who asks for it! (Details below).

Oh, and Tinker Bell puts in an appearance at the end, so could it be that the boy and girl whose faces are fused together on the cover are meant to be Peter Pan and Wendy? And if you don't buy this album, will a fairy somewhere fall down dead? Don't risk it!

In a victory for crass commercialism over artistic integrity, the radio edit of 'You're Gone' is tacked onto the end of the single-CD retail edition - an undeserved repetition since it's nowhere near the best track on the album. That's the single-CD retail edition as opposed to the full-length double album, which is only available from www.marillion.com.

You may find a little card in the single CD offering you the chance to 'upgrade' and receive the 2CD version for £9.99, or you may not - because retailers are not amused at the prospect of people buying the single CD, sending off for the double CD for a tenner, and then returning the single CD to the shop. Because of this the insert is going to be removed, although not before it has made the album ineligible for the album chart. Sigh. So my advice to anyone who wants to buy this album is that you might as well get the complete 2CD version direct from Marillion's website, and cut out the middlemen.

The 2CD version comes in two packages:- the deluxe campaign edition, which comes packaged in a lavish, 128-page hard-bound, glossy booklet that any admirer of the work of Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis would love (and mucho kudos to the designer Carl Glover for that) is still available for the stunning price of £27.99 (€39.99); while the standard jewel case edition costs £18.99 (€ 29). These versions include everything I've mentioned so far (except for the single edit of 'You're Gone') plus four extra tracks:-

'THE DAMAGE'
Which, after a promising Beatley intro is a ghastly racket no-one over thirty should like.

'GENIE'
Which is a bit like 'Map of the World' from the previous album, only not quite so weedy.

'THE ONLY UNFORGIVABLE THING'
Which, musically at least, is pleasant enough but doesn't really go anywhere.

and 'OCEAN CLOUD'

Now at a gnats whisker under eighteen minutes, 'Ocean Cloud' is the longest ever Marillion track (and bloody hell that's saying something!) It's also one of their greatest ever (and bloody hell that's saying something as well!) Clearly it wouldn't fit on the single CD version. (Which is kind of appropriate really - not fitting in is Marillion in a nutshell.)

Inspired by story of Don Allum, who was the first man to row across the Atlantic both ways, it is a musical soundscape (or perhaps 'seascape' would be more appropriate) with echoes of The Orb, Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd. It almost completely redefines the word 'extraordinary' as effortlessly as this sentence redefines the word 'hyperbole'. Sometimes, when I'm out and about I find it hard to stop myself singing its plaintive refrain:

♫ You can take all the boys and the girls in the world
♫ and I’ll trade them this morning for my sweet Ocean Cloud
♫ I've seen too much of life
♫ so the sea is my wife
♫ and a sweet Ocean Cloud is a mistress I'm allowed for now

♫ I've seen too much of life
♫ so the sea is my wife
♫ and the sweet ocean clouds will look down on my boat tonight

[You can download a RealPlayer audio clip of this, and all the other tracks on Marbles, from their website: http://www.marillion.com/discog/marbles/index.html]

This is something every Marillion lover has to have, and every Pink Floyd fan would like. If Marillion weren't subjected to such prejudice, if they were allowed on a level playing field with other British bands, Marbles could sell ten million copies. Mostly to Pink Floyd fans in America, I grant you, but so what? F*@k punk, some of us like music.

Imagine the excitement there would be if a band released an album that was a cross between The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and The Wall by Pink Floyd. Now imagine if it was ignored because the band were as uncool as f*@k. Now stop imagining. It's happened.

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████████████████ Discover a lost art - play Marbles █████████████████
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If you would like a FREE eight track CD "Crash Course: An Introduction To Marillion"
send your full name, postal address and date-of-birth to: freecd@marillion.com
but don't forget to tell them that you heard about it from PJE here on www.ciao.co.uk
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