MARILLION
‘And if my owners let me have some free time some day / With all good intention I would probably run away’ – That Time Of The Night
(The Short Straw)
If Fish-era Marillion had been permitted six months off to recharge their frazzled batteries circa 1988, this may not have been the swansong. Yet – the singer has said – management pushed until Fish had to come up for air, and without him the band have forged a different path. Their evolution is now well established, but as the fourth and final chapter of Marillion: The Opening Series, Clutching At Straws is an almost flawless farewell: dark, dramatic, self-pitying and, of course, confessional. While Torch, the protagonist of the lyrics, is more rooted in reality than his forebear The Jester, he’s still a vessel created for Fish to pour out his angst. An alcoholic absentee father, he drowns in despair, his couplets inspired by his heroes (Dylan Thomas, Kerouac, Burns) depicted on the album cover, or deploying the specific blend of rasping bitterness and raw, exposed vulnerability that is Fish’s own trademark.
Musically it sacrifices some of the sparkle and pop-friendly punch of the mighty Misplaced Childhood to roll and loll in gloomier waves.
It’s still relatively compact: at six minutes That Time Of The Night is the longest straw, but maintains an overall mood that is both subtle and sad. If there’s one department in which it surrenders supremacy to its predecessor, it’s in lacking a big finish to match Childhood’s End/ White Feather, but that feels deliberate.
Clutching… doesn’t want to emerge on a triumphant high. It wants to wallow in its warm, wet circles. Yes, there are energetic, breakneck phases, with the vigorous Incommunicado sounding more like The Who than The Who. Yet from ‘I’ve got no discipline, got no self-control’ in Just For The Record to
‘Your daddy took a raincheck’ in Sugar Mice, it’s more Leonard Cohen fatalism than redemptive arc. More country & western than cosmic
rock. The band, contrary to myths about neo-prog being overblown, are superbly restrained, letting the (sob) stories tell themselves while wrapping them in a gently troubled layer of uneasy listening.
Fish summons his last resources before exhaustion to delve into the soul of barroom losers, salvation seekers, bad habits and big ‘empty gestures’. The lines between poetic observation and autobiography blur, his political comments through White Russian more a list of modern-day horrors than any active suggestions. Torch Song is almost scarily self-aware – ‘Doctor says my liver looks like leaving with my lover’ – while the swooning Sugar Mice is an exercise in self-flagellation
that melts the hardest resistance, its gorgeous refrains shifting the songcraft previously displayed on Kayleigh or Lavender into the no-frills basement of the human psyche. Clutching At Straws is not for the faint-hearted, but its strategy of sound, instead of alienating, coaxes you along its avenues and alleyways.
Three decades on from its June 1987 release (when its alluring misery went to N0.2), this lush and literate landmark gets the deluxe four-CD plus Blu-ray box treatment. First there’s a remix by Andy Bradfield and Avril Mackintosh. It doesn’t sound a heck of a lot different from the original, but would we want it to? So you get what you know and love. Then (over two discs) there are contemporaneous live sets from Edinburgh Playhouse (portions of which appeared on ’88’s The Thieving Magpie). The most effective moments here include a fizzing Fugazi, a gritty Garden Party and a heaving-with-emotion Heart Of Lothian.
The fourth disc gathers the album’s demos, most of which came out in 1999, adding four previously unheard. Elements of these, you’ll know, were retooled for Season’s End, and Fish’s own solo debut (Voice In The Crowd coloured the motifs of Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors). They also confirm that Marillion’s rough sketches sound slicker than many bands’ remasters, and catch Fish in nothing-to-lose flurries of eloquence. Finally, the Blu-ray offers prime audio (stereo) and master 5.1 mixes, a new one-hour documentary featuring band interviews by Mick Wall, and promo videos.
Debate will endure as to which album from this period is the definitive early Marillion creation. Misplaced Childhood, by no means a jolly party animal itself, has the ones anyone can sing along to; this one, by its very nature, demands more commitment and doesn’t offer ultimate catharsis. Once you’re under its spell, though, it’s impossible to leave. Even if Fish did. This is a doughty deluxe honouring, which you couldn’t accuse of clutching at straws: all that reasonably could be there, is. It burns a little brighter now.
It’s the album that most blurred the lines between poetic observation and autobiography for frontman Fish. The latest reissue of this dark masterpiece, refurbished with extensions, refuses to go under. Clutching At Straws doesn’t want to
emerge on a triumphant high. It wants to wallow in its warm, wet circles.