All Marillion albums are great (bar the woeful Somewhere Else) but it's been a long time since they released back to back albums I fully adore and now for the first time since Brave and Afraid of Sunlight we have that
The album consists of 3 multi part epics, a couple of shorter stand alone tracks and a coda which refrains an earlier track. The stand out track is four part The New Kings which berates bankers, worries about Russian oligarchs and considers conspiracy theories of 9/11
This is being called an angry and political album but it's a stately anger along the lines of King of Sunset Town from the first album with Hogarth rather than fist in the air calls for revolution.
(As an aside it's taken them a long time to catch up - NMA were singing about refugees in 2005 on Carnival and I was listening to Miserylab singing "too big to fail" in 2012 so well done on finally tackling the big issues)
Steve Rothery unleashes soaring guitar solo's throughout and album which is full of sumptuous keyboards. Lyrically this is up there with any post Fish album and musically there is a feel of Misplaced Childhood. Check out The Leavers v: One Tonight with the plaintive piano notes being picked out and the drum run up to the chorus - It's really just Lavender 2.0 !!
As ever with this preorder albums the packaging and artwork is magnificent and worth the extra money
This month has to be one of the best ever months for musical releases and this is up near the top of the pile.
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