Marillion With Friends From The Orchestra
Birmingham Symphony Hall
Proggers pull off the band-withstrings-and-brass trick with aplomb.
If success is the best revenge, then Marillion’s enduring high profile as arena-filling Britprog figureheads feels like a bold two-fingered salute to their critics. More than 30 years after their commercial chart peak, the Aylesbury quintet still command an impressively large cult following despite scant support from mainstream media or major labels. Their latest tour features a six-piece chamber orchestra, which adds welcome lightness and texture to otherwise often overwrought baroque’n’roll.
Frontman Steve Hogarth cuts an agreeably louche figure, his swashbuckling stage persona falling somewhere between Lord Byron and Lovejoy. Besides lending Marillion a vague whiff of real rock-star charisma, Hogarth has also helped steer them towards more contemporary, melodious, art-rock territory. Most of tonight’s set sounds more Radiohead than Genesis, although Steve Rothery’s setpiece cosmic guitar solos remain unashamedly Floydian.
Drawing heavily on recent albums, the show is thick with bombastic neo-prog epics like Gaza, The New Kings and Power, although Hogarth’s impassioned delivery seems better suited to more conventional, romantic power ballads like The Sky Above The Rain and The Great Escape. The expanded orchestral rearrangements are generally effective too, used sparingly but crisp and lustrous. Impressively, Marillion are one of the few bands who can perform with an orchestra and sound less pretentious as a result.