Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Halloween calls for the imagination to go into overdrive, a night in which revellers can mix with the weird, the wonderful and even Elmer Fudd’s Wassicly Wabbit if the call should be desired hard enough. Halloween is also the night of corporate holiday, the fast buck made, the night where perhaps some live very much in the moment of F.E.A.R.
Marillion are no strangers to Canada, they are adored north of that most relaxed of borders and before spending two nights in Montreal, where there have the odd convention or two for the band, the bright lights of Ontario’s biggest city can be seen from the C.N. Tower and the signals, the cheers, the mass call for the music and its subsequent echo are louder than any political rally south of the great lake.
F.E.A.R. is knowing that all you have strived for can be unravelled by the forces of greed, of the arrogant, the less than humble and the think nothing, care even less of certain sections of the planet’s so called most evolved species; F.E.A.R. is knowing that your voice is unheard, your thoughts irrelevant and any love you show decried as weak. F.E.A.R. is the calling card of the anti-social who worship the buck, the dollar, the Euro and the Pound as if it is a corporeal deity; F.E.A.R. is possible to turn your head and exclaim Fuck Everyone And Run and it is the album that has propelled the long lived band back into the uppermost of the album charts.
Halloween may be a chance to scare, to put on the clothes of innocence and have a good time but inside the Danforth Music Hall, it was the time of no tricks and absolute beautiful treats; it was the final day of October and the world had gone mad.
Marillion took the city by storm and the Danforth with all the power at their disposal, the streets of anywhere can be paved with gold but they can also crack under the weight of falsehood and unchecked desire, the ego of the one, bloated and self-important, balloon filled pride can break the cohesion of any fabric of a group and yet the antidote, the cure for such things is always found in the crowd at a night of Marillion music.
The rabbits, the extras from a Rocky Horror procession and the T-shirt laden were treated to a night in which the new album took careful centre stage but which also saw set favourites such as The Invisible Man, the stunning Afraid of Sunlight, Neverland and Heart of Midlothian were played with a smile so wide it could have navigated the down-stream Niagara Falls in one lengthy stride or sublime Steve Rothery guitar solo.
Living with F.E.A.R. is a joy, the crowd inside the Danforth Music Hall could certainly attest to that, and in a tour that has been well received below the border, coming north to a Canadian crowd was met with justified and absolute love. A dramatic, smooth, considered and heart thumping gig by the masters of F.E.A.R.
Ian D. Hall