BRAVE (DELUXE EDITION, LIMITED EDITION)

The deluxe rerelease of Brave not only includes the new Steven Wilson remix, but the original Dave Meegan mix of the album and a full live show given a sprucing-up by Michael Hunter. Wilson approaches this one with a fairly light hand - very much taking the original Meegan mix as a guiding point, rather than disposing of it entirely - but he does a rather good job of teasing out some of the anger boiling under the surface of the album's conceptual narrative of teenage angst, emotional exploitation, and personal betrayal.

As for the live show, naturally it's from the Brave tour and includes a performance of the full album. In fact, it's the same performance album that was featured on the second disc of the "Made Again" live release - but I found that one rather underwhelming, its drab packaging containing an alright but not stellar presentation of the material therein; given that it was Marillion's last release on EMI before they were let go by the label, it all gave the impression of a product knocked out in a hurry just to tie things off and maybe get a bit more return on investment.

By contrast, Michael Hunter's mix of the live show is a notable improvement - after all, Hunter had worked closely with the band on developing the album. Furthermore, it's a more complete experience; not only do you get the live performance of the album, but you also have the extract from Hunter's "River" which the band used as their walk-on tape, plus the encores of non-Brave songs which rounded out the show.

Though Marillion hadn't reached the stage yet where they'd routinely do entire live shows without touching on the Fish era - we get Sláinte Mhath from Clutching At Straws and Garden Party from Script For a Jester's Tear here - they come damn close. It helps that Brave was easily the best album they had released post-Fish, but the selection from Holidays In Eden and Seasons End here is really solid. (One might wish for the This Town triptych - particularly since you can rather see that as a prequel to Brave, perhaps tracking the ethical downward spiral of the man who abuses Brave's protagonist, but perhaps erring towards shorter pieces after the long album-length concept number was the right call.)

Between the new mix on the studio album and this fine live show, the deluxe release is a fantastic chronicle of the moment when Marillion once again completely reimagined how a prog band could incorporate the sensibilities of the popular music of their era to come up with something fresh and distinctive. Unlike when they did it with Misplaced Childhood, all too many people didn't notice this time around - but despite this, Brave is easily one of the most important albums in their discography, and the deluxe presentation of it is richly deserved.