BRIEF ENCOUNTER

In 1986, on the back of the hugely successful album Misplaced Childhood, Marillion began a tour as the special guests of Rush and the Brief Encounter mini-album was released to commemorate the tour, primarily as a thank you to the bands then existing fans and as a helping hand in initiation for the new fans.

The first two songs on this disc are the studio recordings of Lady Nina and Freaks. To me these two songs are very much a mixed bag in that Lady Nina is a love song in the vein of Cinderella Search, Lavender and Kayleigh. To be honest there's nothing that stands out on this song as the music is pretty ordinary for Marillion and the lyrics are rather simple, more so than any Fish era song that I know of. Freaks, on the other hand, is a much better song, one of the best of Marillions short songs. Lyrically speaking, this song could very well act as progs very own theme tune and musically it isn't bad, though they have done much better.

The remaining three tracks on this album are all live performances, first off the immensely popular Kayleigh and the title tracks from the first two albums, Script for a Jester's Tear and Fugazi. The band give really good performances of the two title tracks, to the extent that I prefer them to the studio recordings, particularly Fugazi. As for Kayleigh, though its performed very well, it's a bit out of context without the rest of the concept album being played as Pseudo Silk Kimono is supposed to segue into this one and Kayleigh is supposed to segue into Lavender, which you can hear they clearly did in the concert.

It's a rather short disc at only just over 30 minutes and the only reason to buy this album on its own is to hear the live performances of Script. and Fugazi. However, there isn't actually any really bad songs here, even if Lady Nina is below par. I'll give this 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2, as its got some very decent music on it but only really for those that are interested in hearing more of Marillion after they get everything else.