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.