BRAVE

It's impossible to talk about neo-prog and not talk about Marillion. They're a British prog rock band that was formed in Aylesbury, UK. They're one of the biggest names in progressive rock music and are perhaps the main responsible for the style's survival in the 80's when punk rock movement and the new wave dominated almost the entire music scene.

Marillion is divided into two phases. The first was with Fish, where the music is directed around his poetic and sometimes fanciful lyrics, which sounds a lot like Peter Gabriel. The band achieved their most successful in that phase, artistically, progressively and commercially. After four studio albums, Fish leaves the band and was replaced by Steve Hogarth, where the band introduced a new more oriented towards radio friendly style, although they still have an air of depression in their music. But regardless of which stage we are talking about, the band has significant works to offer.

"Brave" is the seventh studio album of Marillion and that was released in 1994. The line up on the album is Steve Hogarth (lead and backing vocals, keyboards and percussion), Steve Rothery (guitars), Mark Kelly (backing vocals and keyboards), Pete Trewavas (backing vocals and basses) and Ian Mosley (drums and percussion). The album had also the participation of Tony Halligan (Uillean pipes) and of The Liverpool Philharmonic (cellos and flutes), as guests.

With "Holidays In Eden", Marillion couldn't reach a wider audience and had turned away their faithful fans. So, they thought it was time to go back to their roots and make a more progressive album. "Brave" is a conceptual album based on a news story that Steve Hogarth heard on the radio about a girl who was taken to police prison after being found wandering the Severn Bridge. She didn't know who she was or where she came from and refused to speak. This inspired him to write a fictional story about this girl and what could have led to her being on Severn Bridge in this state. "Brave" explores the conceptual issue in an elegant and well executed way, providing a taste of the band's potential.

The keyboards are the show really on this album showing a "resurrected" Mark Kelly, whose role had diminished in importance since Fish's departure, Steve Rothery's guitar is present throughout and always fills the songs very well and Pete Trewavas and Ian Mosley form a solid rhythm support base. But, Steve Hogarth is also a big name on this album where his vocals are superb and temperamental. If in any time we have doubted about his abilities, we must listen to the album and at once see him live in the editions released on video in which the band plays "Brave" in full.

"Brave" cuts across all the facets of the Marillion's career, but with a greater emphasis on a mix of the two first studio albums of Hogarth's era, "Seasons End" and "Holidays In Eden", plus a immense dose of inspiration and in a more progressive approach. "Brave" is an album with eleven tracks, where some of them are broken down into several parts with separate names, "Goodbye To All That" and "The Great Escape". Besides them, we have some tracks that are like passages made to allow the listener to immerse themselves in the album's mood. In them, the shine is on account of the great Mark Kelly and his synthesizers. "Brave" starts with the atmospheric "Bridge", one of the most ambient songs on the album. It's followed by "Living With The Big Lie" one of the best pieces on the album with great music and good lyrics. This is a dense, bright and emotional track. "Run Way" is a very beautiful and melodramatic ballad. It has a great guitar solo. "Goodbye To All That" is a fantastic and very dense progressive song that revolves around intense a space atmospheres and with an extremely accessible melody, but without losing its essence. "Hard As Love" is the first hardest song on the album with an excellent solo synth, plus great guitars and powerful vocals. "The Hollow Man" is a semi-acoustic, a really nice change of pace and atmosphere after the previous rock song. "Alone Again Into The Lap Of Luxury" is beautiful, transforming from a great rock melody with a memorable chord progression to a dark ambient sound. "Paper Lies" is like "Hard As Love" a hard rock song that shows the rock side of the band. The title track is another atmospheric mood piece, mostly an ambient track. "The Great Escape" is a great track, one of the greatest works in the band's history, such the emotion it brings. With the ballad "Made Again" the album closes very sweetly.

Conclusion: "Brave" isn't a unanimous album in terms of fans and critics. But, for me, it's a very interesting work, one of the best in Hogarth's era. In reality, "Brave" is a unique album, not only in Marillion's back catalogue, but in the realm of rock music in general. Marillion may never have been the first choice of the usual prog rock heads, yet their fan base remains the most rabidly loyal and in "Brave" they demonstrated that you don't always have to be cool to release a jaw-dropping album. As "Brave" is such a very cohesive album, a conceptual album where all tracks are somehow linked together, it's difficult to pick out individual tracks as highlights. In reality, Marillion has great albums in both phases, but I'm still rooting for the band to produce something again in this format in Hogarth's phase, another concept work.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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