Marillion: Happiness is the Road [first thoughts]

• Remember last year when Marillion's "Somewhere else" album came out? I reviewed it as "adequate. Nothing more."
• Later last year I saw them in concert and reviewed the experience as "disappointing."
• A month or two ago Marillion gave away a song from their new album for free. My response to this was that it was "mediocre. As bland as most of the last album was. "

So it would be fair to say that I didn't have high hopes for the new album...


The album isn't officially out yet. I'll be released next month. But, in an effort to beat P2P file sharers at their own game, Marillion have given away the album for nothing online. Find it here. So in return for giving them my e-mail address (which they had anyway) I have legally downloaded all of the new double album.

And

it

is

very

good!

Ha! Bet you weren't expecting that! I wasn't even expecting that. First impressions (I've only listened to it twice, thus far) are that it is a far more coherent album than anything since Anorak, its certainly better than Somewhere Else and possibly better than Marbles. Its fairly mellow throughout although some of the longer songs build and build to something noisier and more energetic than they start off sounding.

I'll give a more detailed review of it after a number of listens, but it'll be a pretty positive review!

And for what its worth, I think that "whatever is wrong with you" is one of the weaker songs on there.

New Heart album in the pipeline...

I'm excited. In a recent interview, Nancy Wilson says that the new Heart album is scheduled for an 'early-09' release.

You may not be excited by this. But that is probably because you (like oh so many people) don't believe me when I say that Heart's 2004 album 'Jupiter's Darling' is still the best rock record of the millennium so far. It is. Anyone who says otherwise has simply never heard it.

So I'm expecting great things, especially as guitarist and co-song-writer Craig Bartock is still on board.

Here's hoping.

Oh, and a couple of UK tour dates to promote the new album would be fab too.

I know what's inside a television...

A few days ago my four year old daughter and my wife had this conversation:
"Mummy, what is inside a television?"
"You should ask Daddy that"
"Does Daddy know what is inside a television?"
"Yes"
"Good"

And that was that. She has since then never asked me what is inside a television, she simply seems content in the knowledge that I know.

Armed with that knowledge, she has since been overheard asking other kids at her nursery "Does your Daddy know what is inside a television?" - but other four year olds don't seem to care about this issue.