Greetings, Glancers! Of all of the places I’ve never visited, Poland is one of those places. Some day, you know? Paul and Sanja are going though – maybe next week, maybe the week after. They’re going to see Marillion. Will there be time for a Digi Poland thing? I’m sure they’ve probably addressed this somewhere, but I don’t know what day it is never mind what week.
Paul explains that Marbles i-iv was originally written as a single piece, at least lyrically. As I mentioned in one of my Marbles posts, the moment someone writes a song and then splits it into several parts, you know someone’s immediately going to edit them back together. I agree with Paul’s assessment – they’re interludes, not the most interesting, but I wouldn’t feel like skipping them when listening to the album as they’re fairly short. Are they integral to the overall quality? I don’t think we’d miss them if they weren’t they, I don’t think they add much, but they don’t do any damage.
I’m trying to remember if I did any explicit damage with Marbles. Now, I just played my strange post apocalyptic zombie game with them, indoors. I didn’t even want to risk taking them outside for one of the local gingers getting their freckled hands all over them. Plus we had a pond in the back garden, and I’d already lost several prized toys in there – Micro Machines, MUSCLE men. Of course, one summer when we were cleaning the pond I did manage to dredge up one such missing MUSCLE man – the legendary (self-named) Leprosy Man. He was a little discoloured and probably disorientated, but no worse for wear for having been the play thing of goldfish and rudd for 10 years. And who cares about discoloured skin when you have leprosy?
We did of course throw plenty of stones? Look, it was Northern Ireland in the 80s, the only thing we had to do at the weekends between episodes of He-Man was throw stones at each other. There was a new house being built at the bottom of my street, and one of my pseudo mates (he was in the year above us in school and was never fully part of the gang) used to entice younger kids (don’t worry, this isn’t going into dodgy territory) over to this site, grab fistfuls of stones, gravel, and muck, and throw them up into the air to rain down onto the kids’ heads. I fell victim to this several times, and like dreaming about teeth falling out, I sometimes have dreams about pulling that loose sediment out of my locks. I did hit one of the younger kids on my street with a stone from a Black Widow catapult once. It wasn’t intentional – he was heading home and I thought it would be good sport to launch a pebble into the air in his general direction. I didn’t expect to see him fall over and squeal 8 seconds after I let fly, just as he reached his driveway. Don’t worry folks, he wasn’t harmed. Badly. The lesson seems to be – never be younger than anyone on my street.
Do I have time to mention that time I had my head split open by a boomerang? Lets leave that for another day. All of these memories had a great impact on H, and rather than sticking them into a blog no-one reads, he put them into what appears to be his best piece of work. On Genie then, and one of Sanja’s favourites which she sees as uplifting and easy-listening – pleasant, effortless. Paul speaks positively of the song’s placement, coming precisely in the running where it should. The album’s consistency and coherence is definitely one of its strong points. Paul says the Production is a little more raw – while it’s ostensibly a pop ballad, it’s emboldened in a less commercial way to accentuate the lyrics and emotion. I think it’s still very glossy and they could have gone even further to rough it up if that was the intent, but it’s perfect as it is. Sanja’s lyrical analysis feels spot on, but Paul lets us know it’s all based on a specific incident. H had a bit of an obsessive fan who had an interesting story about his past life. I’m sure she’s happy she now has a song about her – behind it all, this being a rock band, is a horny dirtbag trying to not shag everything in sight.
Moving on to The Only Unforgiveable Thing, and I think we can all agree with Paul’s ‘one of Marillion’s best songs’ sentiment. Paul’s ‘it’s so diverse but not’ thought is one I can agree with – there’s a wealth of musical talent on display but I can see plenty of listeners being bored by the repeated smooth and relaxed vibe. Not me though. The album is a step up from everything else they’ve ever done for me, as a first time listener. I don’t know which upcoming albums are those which fans think rival Marbles for title of best album.
Sanja loves the descriptive weight of the words, the persistent oppression. I found it a very Thom Yorke lyric – finding the intangible in the mundane every day objects, depression and paranoia personified by those items we use or see every day. I felt it was among their best lyrical work, and Paul says it can be interpreted in two ways but it’s most likely about guilt due to infidelity. Horny dirtbags. Paul connects this to the ‘lost the stars and sky’ line with H not willing to give up the horny dirtbag life, while Sanja saw it as a relation to Genie’s themes, as I did. Paul recalls how his first experience of these songs made him think they had taken a creative leap forwards and that everything the band was doing around that time seemed to lead to success, but with that we sign off until next time. Go listen for yourself and let us know in the comments what you think!
The Spac Hole 