SOUNDS THAT CAN'T BE MADE

In my opinion MARILLION haven't been a Neo-Prog band since "Seasons End" back in 1989, the first album Hogarth sang on after Fish was kicked out. That album was pretty much written with Fish in mind so there's that. I love "Seasons End" mainly I think because I have spent my life in a tourist town and when Summer ends you used to know it when we were a small town, not so much now. "Misplaced Childhood" and "Seasons End" are on my list of all time favourite Neo-Prog albums. Here, like the many albums before we get Progressive Rock that is extremely well done as usual. The band are almost Adult Contemporary at times with several songs being quite mellow with the chorus being where they amp it up some. This album is long, too long.

So many highlights but the title track, "Montreal" and "Lucky Man" stand out for me as the best. The latter is all about the chorus and those meaningful words that I completely agree with "I have everything that I want". "Gaza" rubs me the wrong way big time as my brothers in Israel know a little bit about being a target over their thousands of years in existence. The band have stated they are not anti-Israeli but they are missing the big picture here completely. And they have lost fans over this as stated on the fan based web site. Instrumentally this is a great track though. The only tune I'm really not into is "Invisible Ink". By the way "Montreal" is one of their best songs, especially that instrumental section from 5 minutes to 6 1/2 minutes.