ANORAKNOPHOBIA

After trying to renovate themselves in "Radiation" and "Marillion.com" and not achieving it completely, they tried to go a step further with "Anoraknophobia"... This is a very eclectic record, with some new sounds and styles never heard before in Marillion. There's some funky influences in Fruit of the Wild Rose, Quartz have some rap verses from Steve Hogarth (really strange thing indeed...), This is the 21th Century has some electronic feeling in a similar way of trip-hop... But here are also typical marillion tunes here. Between you and Me is a good opener, very modern sound and good guitar playing at the end, but it's still pure Marillion... Map of the World is, for me, the best song of the album. Really beautiful, a song wich could easily had been in "This Strange Engine". Catchy tune...

And the classical Marillion song structures are also in When I Meet God, a good tune, and Quarz... And Separated Out is the typical rocker from Marillion, reminiscent from songs like An Accidental Man or Deserve. But like I said, the overall feeling of the album is different... It's a more electronic album, with a lot of effects and strange keyboards arrangements. And sometimes the results are not really satisfactory... Quarz is not bad, but some experiments like the rap verses spoils a little the song (but the bass lines and the final choirs are good...) Separated Out is just insipid... Fruit of the Wild Rose is too different of what I expect from Marillion to enjoy it completely... And If My Heart Were A Ball It Would Roll Uphill is just boring for me. The worst song of the album in my humble opinion...

Conclusion: maybe the most experimental album from Marillion. It has some interesting new facts wich make it special, but some things are too weird and untypical from Marillion to allow the whlole enjoying of the album. Maybe it's just a problem of my personal preferences...But of course, some songs like Between You and Me, Map of the World and When I Meet God, and maybe This is The 21th Century too, are obligated for every Marillion's fan.

My rating: ***

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