Marillion at the ABC, Glasgow. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The point of the journey, as Rush once said, is not to arrive. By completing the journey, all that you have learned about yourself can turn eventually to dust and atoms. It is perhaps a finer, arguably more noble, pursuit to keep travelling, to keep the finishing line hidden from view, to never have the experience of something ending less it eat away at you and allows the dust which holds the joints and creaking crevices together to inch by delicate inch slowly fade away.

The point of Marillion’s journey, especially their Christmas excursions out on the road, is to highlight that the music that has been part of many of a life, marriage, illness, glorious times, children being born and the overwhelming sadness that comes with the finality of death, is the gathering of souls that is tighter than a lot of families, the essence, the spirit of being around people that in many cases you would lay your life down for, take a punch for or even find yourself marrying one of them. This is a particular point which seeing a room full of people at times verging on tears or bouncing with eagerness and so full of beans that they are likely to knock a supporting joist in a venue hall out of position, such is the audience’s want for a Marillion show.

That feeling is intensified at a gig in Scotland, not even Liverpool, the music capital of the U.K., can come close to capturing the spirit of the night when all the elements are in play. Arguably it is a reason that the ABC in Glasgow is always so overwhelming an experience to witness when the mood really hammers home.

Spanning two different and diverse eras, the set list for the crowd in Glasgow was one that would appeal to both spectrums of sometimes friendly opposition, the pre and post 1989 fan. Opening with the highly charged Gazpacho and towering Uninvited Guest, the evening was laid out before the equally highly charged audience, their bodies, minds and spirits almost at their combustible zenith, and if there was anyone in from a bottling plant inside the venue they would had enough emotions bottled to never have to work off the suffering and joy of humanity again.

With tracks such as the beautiful No One Can, Easter, Sounds That Can’t Be Made and the sublime Season’s End sitting comfortably with both band and crowd as Warm Wet Circles, At That Time of The Night, Slainthe Mhathe and the evening closer in the boisterous Heart of Midlothian, this was a night for memories to crash and converge, for the spectacle of romance to join with the scepticism of supposed truth. For Steve Hogarth, Mark Kelly, Pete Trewaves, Ian Mosley and Steve Rothery, truth comes in the form of a well placed note in exactly the right place and time and to which that extra cry of creative emotional turmoil is enjoyed as of biting down on the sweetest fruit imaginable. For the crowd at any of their gigs on this tour, the truth is just knowing that no matter what, no matter the put-downs and snide remarks, nothing can take this band and its history away from them.

With any bag of musical Christmas presents, there is always the little extra that doesn’t get seen until the end is upon it and in a marvellous renditions of The Christmas Song and aptly on the anniversary of the passing of the much loved and much missed John Lennon, a rather poignant Happy Christmas (War Is Over), a sprinkling of the festive period ahead was handed tenderly across to a very happy, certainly reflective and utterly transfixed audience.

Marillion will never be fashionable, that is to their credit, for who wants fashionable in their life when you can have true substance?

Ian D. Hall