VIGIL IN A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

I have to say in advance, I used to love Marillion's early records when I was young. I'm not sure if it would work the same nowadays, I've to admit I did not listen to them since a while. But I listened more to Genesis' early records recently and IMHO I prefer these much more to those of Marillion, anyway they were just a nice substitute at that time because Genesis decayed in quality. I stumbled just recently over Fish's solo outputs and I listened to several ones of them starting from "Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors" to "Field Of Crows" and I've to say there are only few albums that are able to convince me, actually mainly "Sunset on Empire" and to a certain extent "Raingods with Zippos". At least to my ears the majority of his stuff sounds too much in the popular vein if concentrating on the music, what I usually do. Certainly he's got good lyrics and an expressive voice as well, but for me that's not enough to call it an excellent progrock. It's just quite good and very nice and easy listenable prog, more or less in a pop-ish vein, like the stuff, Marillion is doing as well nowadays. This album has very fine moments, but it contains as well a considerable amount of songs that remind me more to COLLINS rather than to GABRIEL, two names FISH always had and will have to compete with, since the music he's been doing is a derivative one. That's why I can't rate his stuff higher than 3 stars.But still a quite enjoyable "easy-listening" album!