SUITS

This is the kind of album which needs a track-by track comment as there's not a concept or just a dotted line between the tracks. The style is in line with the post-Marillion period and after a not very good album of covers it appears to be a little better. The presence of the former Alan Parson's Project and Camel David Paton is less relevant than expected.

It doesn't start very well, anyway. The opener is a repetitive uptime song on which Fish repeats the word "Suits" several times. From here the album's title.

Things start to go better with "Lady Let It Lie" and "Emperor's Song" which are more on the early Marillion's chords. "Fortunes Of War" seems taken from Clutching At Straws, so a sequence of three good songs.

I don't like much the songs of the kind of "Somebody Special" even if they have ever been part of the Fish production. Too much Peter Gabriel for me.

"No Dummy" is a song that doesn't lead anywhere. At least for me. Not that is bad or disturbing, only it's not a reason to make me buy the album. It should be jazzy or funky in the author's intentions but I think it doesn't meet the target. And it's not funky that I look for in a Fish album. "Pipeline" is a little better but I sometimes skip it.

"Jumpsuit City" is a more regular Fish song, not a masterpiece, but surely better than the previous two. It's jazzy but it doesn't appear "forced" like No Dummy.

"Bandwagon" is a funny song, but try to sing it spelling "Under Pressure" instead of "Bandwagon"...a coincidence of course.

"Raw Meat"...is it a prologue to Sushi? Joking apart it's a song from the romantic side of Fish, that's I think what he does better. The only song on this album that can compete with the best songs of Vigil from a musical point of view.

This is not a bad album, but it's still far from the debut and has some weak songs in the middle. A shorter album would have been better.