THE LAST STRAW

When Fish recorded Clutching At Straws with Marillion in 1987, he and the band had no inkling that it would be their last album together. When he undertook the long recording process for Weltschmerz, which would eventually see release in 2020, his conscious intention was to draw a line under his solo career, at least as far as making studio albums went, and retire from that aspect of his work. Nonetheless, as a swansong to one phase of his career Clutching At Straws ended up being a serenditiously apt statement, with an air of finality to it as vivid as the one Fish consciously applied to Weltschmerz.

That might explain why The Last Straw works so well as a live album, for it captures a Fish concert with a very special setlist. All of the songs from Clutching At Straws (plus the contemporary B-side, Tux On) make an appearance on the set, accounting for a bit half the running time. The rest consists of around 42 minutes of songs which would all later see the light of day on Weltzscmerz - for this show was recorded in 2018, around two years before Weltschmerz finally released.

This is far from unprecedented for Fish. Suits, his first solo album after leaving Polydor, also saw a very long gestation period, and some songs from it had airings on shows predating his major label farewell, the cover album Songs From the Mirror. As he workshopped Suits, he undertook the "Toile Tour", with concerts aimed at refining the material on the road. This show, however, I think works better - in part because Suits was a bit of a transitional album for Fish, whereas Weltschmerz has a more confident style which builds on the excellent precedent set by A Feast of Consequences, and in part because marrying the Weltschmerz songs to Clutching At Straws has a certain logic to it. Last Marillion album with Fish, last Fish album with Fish, let's put them in a shaker and see how that cocktail works out...

Well, what you get is some nicely updated Marillion material - teasing out the bluesy torch song nature of much of Clutching At Straws - along with solid early pointers for the direction that Weltschmerz was involving in at this time. The nocturnal air of much of the material is a big help; all of this stuff feels like it very much belongs together, and it's great that Fish had a chance to blend the end of one career with that of another in such an inspired manner. The show itself hails from Glasgow, right at the end of the Last Straw tour, and therefore finds Fish and the band in exuberant mood, with the set now well-practiced. In addition, Fish himself is on fine form, making this yet another very fine late-career live album from him, which can sit proudly next to excellent live releases like Farewell To Childhood and The Moveable Feast.

The physical release of this includes as a bonus a DVD of a set from earlier in 2018, at Fairport Convention's Cropredy festival. Fish gives in the booklet the embarrassing story of how during the concert a hemorrhoid burst, leading to a trail of blood dribbling down the back of his trousers - and creating the impression he'd pooped himself onstage. In terms of his performance, it's nowhere near as embarrassing as that - but the DVD is very evidently at the mercy of the festival mixing desk, which is often not ideal, and so this should be regarded as an optional bonus rather than part of the main event here.