Marillion – Radiation and Marillion.com
“Here I am globally altered and disheveled” – Radiation
“Wide awake on the edge of the world” – Marillion.com
Now we arrive at record number 10 and 11 for the band. I’m going to look at them together as for me they are almost like a double album separated by a year. Stylistically they are perhaps the two most similar albums in the bands entire catalog. The only others that I’d say are maybe as close are Script and Fugazi, but it is a subjective viewpoint.
Again, recorded at the Racket Club, the band’s small studio, Radio10n was co-produced by the band and Stewart Every between November 1997 and June 1998, and released on September 21st. The second of three albums for Castle Records would see the band really stretch out creatively, something that some fans couldn’t connect with, while others fully embraced. This was a bit of a fallow period for me, as I think it was for a lot of fans outside of Europe/UK. Both this album and Marillion.com that followed were really hard to find and at the same time the band did not tour North America between This Strange Engine in 1997 and Marbles in 2004. I think the band kind of fell off people’s radar…at least until the pre-order campaign for their 12th album Anoraknophobia in 2001. I’m not even sure when I bought Radiation. I have a feeling it was around the time that Marillion.com was released, as the earliest email I have from their website email distribution list was around 1999.
Radiation did not do well in the charts. It peaked at 35 in the UK but stayed for only one week. A lot of people did not like the mix of this album and I believe there are stories of the band having to utilize old tape to record, due to limited funds. In 2013 the album was given a fresh coat of paint when the band had it remixed and remastered by Michael Hunter. It was reissued as Radiation 2013 and is a significant improvement in sound and clarity, really bringing out some of the nuances lost in the original mix. I’m a big fan of this remix. Like everything in life it has its fans and its detractors. The original is good. The remix is great.
Costa Del Slough starts out with a cacophony of noise and some vocal wailing, which on inspection is derived from both the songs Three Minute Boy and Cathedral Wall, found later in the album. It drops out and turns into a simple guitar and vocal ditty that is a more sarcastic take on the message found on the song Seasons End. It acts as a short intro to the song Under The Sun which is a fun, upbeat rock song, and continues the idea of planet based seasonal disorder. It is a guitar heavy song with an awesome keyboard line through the chorus that feels thereminesque. There’s some pre-millennium tension happening on this song which I think is executed well. It actually feels fresh and different from a lot of what the band had done to date. The 2013 version cuts the beginning of Costa Del Slough leaving it neutered to 45s down from 1:27. The panning of vocals and guitar are also extreme to the point of distracting. I think I prefer the original. The remix of Under The Sun, though, gives the song an added kick and overall it has way more space to breathe for a dense song, and way more balls than the original. It also cuts out Pete saying “thank god we didn’t do that on stage…yet”.
A strong one two punch is achieved by the equally upbeat The Answering Machine. In the original, Hogarth’s vocals come across as a bit buried and flat in the mix, but the remix is a whole other beast pushing them way up front where they should be. The stop and start dynamics of the song is also greatly enhanced. In fact, the biggest problem with the original is that it is a great song trapped in a very undynamic mix. The revised version is far superior and really shines this song up nicely into a great mid-career rocking tune. All of the blurbs and blops in the music are retained as well. I really love the dynamic of the new version of this song. You can hear if you listen closely to the new mix h saying “god I’m in love with that” right before the final verse. No idea what it means but I like it. The side by side for this song makes the original sound like it hasn’t even been mastered, the difference is so dramatic.
Three Minute Boy is one of those lyrics that can be read in multiple ways. It talks about a guy who writes songs, has a girlfriend, and references Elvis and The Beatles…specifically I think it is pointing at John Lennon. It also reads like a bit of a personal take on fame, touching on themes addressed on the Afraid Of Sunlight album…King in particular. It is a fantastic song that starts with just piano and vocals, but builds up into an almost hypnotic powerhouse. It goes on a bit too long on the album in my opinion, but live it is one of those songs that the audience will continue singing for minutes, especially after the band have left the stage if performed as a set closer. The original version is great, but the remix adds much more bottom end. It actually makes the song sound more along the lines of what it sounds like live. I used to find this song kind of uninteresting, but it has really grown on me over the years, especially after hearing it performed live a few times, which is really where it shines. The remix also cuts out the chatter at the end of the band making fun of Hogarth’s vocals which is a good thing as I think it took away from the song and was superfluous.
The gentle, almost inaudibly quiet Now She’ll Never Know follows. It reminds me a bit of Beyond You, also from Afraid of Sunlight, in that it feels like a gaping open wound of emotion. Like climbing inside someone’s thoughts while they are trying to navigate a dissolving relationship. The line “Looks like we have a house to sell” foreshadows House which is the last song on the dot com album. Steve’s falsetto is almost out of his range and the straining to hit the notes adds to the fragility of the song. Again, the remix does a great job of pulling this song out of its shell.
The only single released from the Radiation album was These Chains, which only managed to reach 78 in the UK chart. I used to really dislike this song. I’m still not a fan of the chorus, which I find somewhat irritating for some reason, but the rest of the song has some really excellent moments with a great solo by Rothery. It is an odd example of a song that I feel the chorus actually makes the song suffer. It still isn’t my favourite on the record, but it is less intolerable than I used to find it. By the same token I could do without it and not miss it much. I think the number of times in my life that I’ve thought “Fuck I really feel like listening to These Chains” is a big bagel. Some people love it.
The opposite is the case with Born To Run. This song has been an absolute favourite of mine since I first heard this record. It might even be my favourite song on Radiation. It is a slow blues-based piece that some people absolutely can’t stand. Not to be confused with tramps like us, this one is a slow burning mix of sweet slick guitar and wonderful Hammond organ. The song hangs beautifully in a suspended state for the entire duration of the song. It is sparse to perfection, and it doesn’t really stray far from where it starts, which is sometimes a criticism, but in this case, it allows the song to become an enchanting slice of moody beauty. It is the most tasteful classy song they have ever recorded, in my opinion. Rothery wrings pure fucking emotion out of his guitar, in one of my all-time favourite solos he’s ever laid down. The original was great. The remix turns me to jelly. Fuck this song is fantastic. The fact that this song is a part of the framework of music this band has produced is one of the things that makes me love them so much. This is where latter day Marillion really stretch their wings and fly for me. It’s subtle and you can miss it if you aren’t paying attention. It reminds me of a lot of music I used to see in small bars in Toronto in the early 1990s when I was just a budding music fan. I’ve heard this performed a few times, but I wish they played it more often than they do cause it is gorgeous live.
Cathedral Wall comes crashing in, totally destroying the mood set by Born To Run…I guess something had to. There is something eerie about this song. It has is a reverse echo effect used on the vocals in the verses, which makes it sound like someone is being tortured in a dungeon…maybe that’s the idea but I do find it kind of strange sounding, despite being an interesting idea. I also find the multi-tracked vocals in the chorus uncomfortable sounding. Actually, that’s probably the best way I could describe this song – it sounds uncomfortable for the first half and it gets noisy and convoluted in the second half. There is something captivating about it, but overall I don’t think I like it all that much. I mean I’ve been listening to it for 20 years and still feel undecided. The remix helps a bit, but I can’t really figure out where I land with it. If I say I don’t like it I immediately think, no that’s wrong I do, but when I think I like the song I then think, maybe I don’t. What does that mean? I think it means I both like it and dislike it at the same time. The ending of the original version has an echo drenched snippet of These Chains added on which is cut from the remix, which is a good thing as it never really made sense to me. It sounded like someone smoked a big bowl and started fucking around with editing some shit for no reason. It certainly doesn’t tie anything together that I can make out. Maybe it’s symbolism or a metaphor for something that I don’t understand….OK I just listened to the song for the fourth time in a row and I’ve decided I that I love it. It can stay.
Final song on Radiat10n is A Few Words For The Dead which sounds unlike anything they have ever done. It is a 10-minute song that sounds at first like a mix between the jungle noises at the beginning of Close To The Edge combined with a pulsing drumbeat reminiscent of a quiet version of Biko by Peter Gabriel. It is teeming with ambience and takes its time before the pulsing guitar enters almost two minutes into it. The vocals don’t start until a quarter of the way through, with a lyric that basically addresses the passing on of gun culture from generation to generation. It is a scathing indictment that speaks to an unwillingness to change…The song builds slowly in intensity, very gradually repeating the words “It carries on” until the song reaches the 6 minute mark where h then says quietly “or you could love”. At which point the song blows open like the sun breaking through the clouds in a technicolour display. The drums come pounding in, acoustic guitars, multi layered vocals, exploding melodies. It is a breathtaking ending to a song, that takes its time building up to one of the great moments of release, which the band is so great at creating. Often when performing this song live Hogarth will hold a machine gun with a red rose stuffed down the barrel to make the point of the song abundantly clear.
I’ve always quite liked Radiation, even more so with the 2013 upgrade. Not all of it but for the most part I have found myself drawn to both this one and the follow up Marillion.com. They are totally unique sounding records in the band’s catalog, almost like sister albums in many ways, and I’ve always thought the experimentation exhibited was overall much more successful than on This Strange Engine. The North American version of the album added two additional songs. First was an acoustic studio version of Estonia which I must say I absolutely love. I find it much more affecting than the studio version on This Strange Engine. It is totally stripped down, and I think the simplicity opens it up in a way that is easier for me to relate to. It is a wonderful version that was somewhat premonitory of the Less Is More album. The second song is Memory Of Water (Big Beat Mix), also an alteration from the TSE album. I’m not sure how significant an improvement it is on the album version. I mean I still don’t really like it and it is a bit on the long side. Actually, weirdly enough it kind of makes me want to re-evaluate my initial assessment of the TSE version. I’m thinking I may have been too harsh on that one. This version also appeared on the These Chains single along with a live version of Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees. The band has played this arrangement live on occasion though neither version have been performed since 2010 which is fine. There are much better songs for them to choose from.
Prior to the album’s release the band did a couple of one off shows at The Walls Restaurant in Oswestry England on June 25-26 1998 which was released as Unplugged at The Walls on Racket Records. It was an all-acoustic show with some lesser played songs including the live debut of Beyond You from Afraid Of Sunlight and Now She’ll Never Know from the yet to be released Radiation album. They also did a few covers including Fake Plastic Trees (released on the single noted above), Blackbird and Abraham, Martin and John. It was a great idea that ended up being the precursor to the Less Is More album 11 years later. The band did a few promotional shows in select cities in Europe before their short 14 date Radioactive Tour which lasted less than a month.
Following the tour, the band headed right back into their studio. Two songs from the Radiation sessions, Tumble Down The Years and Interior Lulu, were already written but left off the album as the band didn’t feel they were ready at that point. The album was written and recorded between December of 1998 and August 1999 with a release date of October 18 1999. This time Porcupine Tree leader and fan of the band, Steven Wilson mixed five of the nine songs, Nick Davis mixed three and Trevor Vallis one. Marillion.com would end up being the final album of their three-album contract with Castle Records. I have a feeling the band were itching to get out of it which is why there was such a quick turnaround between these two albums. The title alluded to the band’s brand-new website url (which they still use to this day), as well as an embracing of the connection they had managed to develop with their fans since the success of the Tour Fund campaign several years prior. The tour fund definitely got the band’s attention and they (specifically Mark Kelly), knew that this was probably a key component to how they would be able to survive financially as a band. While full on embracing of the crowdfunding concept was still one album off, they did reach out to their fans for this release, asking anyone interested to submit their passport photos. In the end 732 individual photos of fans were used to make up part of the artwork for the album. Hands up if you were included. I think I was made aware of this just a little too late so I’m not in this one. The band also implemented their first attempt at building an email distribution list by including an offer in the CD package to have a free cd sent to anyone who provided their email contact info. Titled Marillion.co.uk, there have been three different versions of this produced over the years with different material on each. This would prove to be an invaluable decision when it came to their next album Anoraknophobia.
A Legacy begins the album much the way Casa Del Slough and Under The Sun led Radiation. A short quiet segment that then morphs into a mid-tempo rocker. There is a great little break near the beginning of the song which for the second time to date reminds me a lot of latter period XTC. The song is a bit dense overall, though dynamic, and it ends with a nice nylon string guitar section which is the best part of the song. It could really use a rejig similar to the Radiation 2013 treatment. I think it might come to life more. It’s an OK song, though not nearly as good as Under The Sun to me. It suffers from being only moderately interesting.
Second song is Deserve, which reminds me a little bit of a lesser version of Paper Lies with a saxophone. Not the good kind of sax like in Berlin, though, more like kind you might hear from the beefy oiled up shirtless dude on the Tina Turner Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack. I love sax but it can also be extremely irritating in the wrong context. I like the idea of the self-fulfilling nature of the lyrics, both good and bad, but overall, the song kind of falls flat. The song also suffers from something that when done well is amazing, but most of the time it stands out as an attempt to up the excitement of a song. I’m talking about key changes mid song. This one does it multiple times, but I feel like it is a mis-step – all it does is change the key without the effect of a natural escalation of intensity. Then some horns enter which remind me of early 80s Genesis. I love horns as well, but again here it doesn’t really work for me. So, in the end this song feels like a succession of elements that make the song progressively worse the longer it lasts. Deserve is one of my least favourite Marillion songs.
That’s two raspberries in a row. Can the album pick itself up from a stumbled start? Um you bet it can. Go! Is a song that I feel, until it’s recent rise in status following the band’s first Royal Albert Hall performance a few years ago, has always been kind of ignored by fans. This song has been right up my alley since the first time I heard it. It is the kindred spirit of Born To Run of this album. A totally different slow melodic transfixing song, which again doesn’t really stray far from its origins, yet is better for it. Its beauty is in its simplicity and the incredibly plucked harmonic bass notes. I can feel my heartbeat when I listen to this song. Everything about it is just the right amount of lushness and stardust. This song has been one of my all-time favourite songs by the band since it was released and again, because it succeeds so spectacularly in achieving a very specific mood via a style, not really attempted by the band previously. I don’t even know how to classify it musically speaking. All I know is that when the dual harmony vocals hit at the end it is a sublime moment and a perfect ending to the song. Spectacular stuff that again is easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention.
OK we’re on a roll, gimme something amazing…ok give me something great…how about something pretty, pretty, pretty good? OK we’ll go with that. I know what the band is aiming for here I think…I’m pretty sure it is a mix between The Cars and the Beatles. Actually, the truth is this is Rich is one of those songs that I don’t think I like, but when I listen to it I actually find myself enjoying it much more than I remember. Seeing it live has helped raise its stature as well. I love the great, slightly altered Mary Pickford poached line “Failure isn’t about falling down, Failure is staying down”…it may have been Socrates who said it…either way it’s a great line. Actually, the whole song is derived from a series of quotes from famous people. Check out the copyright on the song. If I was comparing, I’d say it is The Answering Machine of this album. Solid but not spectacular. No singles were released from the dot com album but Rich was sent to radio as a promo track.
I know it’s a lot of songs to work through but stay with me, we’re almost there. Actually, there are five more to go…but this one is another favourite of mine. Again like Go! and Born To Run, Enlightened has always stuck out to me as one of the best songs on either album. I’ve noticed actually, while reviewing these two records that the places where the band really tried to do something different is where they succeeded the most to me. Where they play it more straight ends up feeling like things they have done better elsewhere. Anyway, Enlightened is a gorgeous tune. I feel the same way about this song as others describe how Estonia affects them. I know it’s not right to suggest that two songs on the same album are sublime but this one really is to me. I love the piano, the gently played drums by the always tasteful Ian Mosley, the subtle guitar licks and I love the imagery evoked by the line “climbing the forks of the lightning”. It is one of my favourite Hograth lines. I think it is a love song, but I’m not sure and I don’t really care. It is also one of my favourite Marillion songs.
This album seems to really jockey between great and OK. Built In Bastard Radar is pretty divisive. A lot of people really dislike it. I’m not totally offended by it, but I do think it is a pretty weak track overall. Actually, musically it isn’t too bad, but the lyrics miss the mark for me. I mean I get it, he is saying men are dicks but lyrically this song is such a broad brush stroke generalization that I’m not sure it actually achieves anything. It almost feels like he was told he had to write a song about men being dicks and this was the result. I don’t want to talk about it anymore cause the next song is WAY better.
Tumble Down The Years is a beautiful love song which has the most amazing multi-layered, multi-tracked guitars of any Marillion song. Every stanza adds a different guitar track playing a different line that builds together into a beautiful synergy. The song is simple yet effective. It doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is, but it succeeds due to its economy of principles. The mix of accompanying piano, Hammond and acoustic guitar all add subtle flourishes, but it is all quite moving and effective, plus a tasteful guitar solo. I love this song because it is SO difficult to write a simple song and this one is simply perfect.
Holding the penultimate and most proglike spot on the album is Interior Lulu, a 15-minute wig out of a song. It is kind of a reimagining of the Marillion epic that would see similar applications moving forward. I used to dislike this song quite a bit, but I must say it has REALLY grown on me over the years. I’ve read explanations of what this song is about, and I still don’t know what the fuck an Interior Lulu is, but I know it must be something interesting. The music sure is. It moves from moody atmospherics to full on wacked out keyboard mayhem and back, with many peaks and troughs that are quite amazing in their subtlety and power. I would suggest that this is Hogarth’s best vocal performance on either record. The acoustic break around the 9-minute mark is particularly great, in a Man Of A Thousand Faces kind of way. Despite clearly being a conglomerate of different musical sections I think this song holds together incredibly well and it is interesting, moving music…whatever it is about. They don’t play this song live nearly enough. It deserves way more attention than it gets. It was also the first reference to the internet in one of their songs…but not the last.
Finally, we come to the end of this Siamese-Twin assessment. Here at the end of the second pf two albums which undoubtably contains the broadest selection of musical styles the band attempted to date, comes the song that splits fans more than any other. House has been described as the band’s take on Massive Attack. Does it sound like Massive Attack…well yes and no. It captures the essence of the extreme chilled out vibe, but it is also distinctly Marillion. For the record I absolutely love this song. It is so different, so bold, so effective, yet so very Marillion. The subtleties of instrumentation are exactly what you would expect from them and it is just so heartbreakingly beautiful and chill and hypnotic. Lyrically it taps familiar post relationship grief anthropomorphizing one’s home with the feelings and emotions that have existed with its walls and is a deeply lonely song. In fact, I would say it is one of, if not the saddest song Hogarth has written. The lyrics are incredibly moving, picking up from the theme of Now She’ll Never Know from Radiation. I find it inconceivable how anyone couldn’t love this song but there are lots that don’t. I don’t get it, but hey to each their own. I don’t expect any band I love to give me the same thing every time they release an album. In fact, my favourite bands make it a point of not doing that and I think it is why I end up becoming so invested in their catalogs. I feel challenged and enlightened by the diversity of music. It makes me feel more musically educated and more informed bf the beauty of variety. I know the platitude variety is the spice of life, but musical variety is the heart and soul of existence. It speaks a language that is like no other and almost impossible to articulate…my 40000 words aside.
I mentioned earlier that I feel these two albums are like sister records. Just as Radiation featured the number 10 in the title, in reference to being the band’s 10th studio album, Marillion.com featured the number 11 in place of the two L’s in the band’s name. As well each album features a single woman centered on the cover, one on beach and the other in the middle of a city street. Radiation 2013 even has the colour changed from red to blue, further enhancing the similarity between the artwork of these two records. There are horizonal lines on both, and both figures are holding an object in front of them, a burning bouquet of flowers on Radiation and a laptop computer on dot com. I don’t actually know if any of this was intentional, but I do think that it ties these two records together even more so, even if by coincidence. As mentioned, both also have some amazing tracks and some not so amazing songs. Both albums are nine tracks long with the second last on each being the most proggy (Cathedral Wall and Interior Lulu) and the final on each being the most chilled out (A Few Words For The Dead and House). They are definitely both drawing from the same well, to the point that I find it difficult to recall which songs are on which album at times. Something I have no problem with on any other Marillion release. Stylistically they are probably the most varied and furthest from what fans might identify as a traditional Marillion sound. I’m not sure I could pick one over the other, as they both have their strengths and weaknesses, which I think are similar to some degree. The experiments in new territory are where they surpass themselves while familiar territory is somewhat less successful or maybe just less interesting. I do feel, though, that between the two of them there is one amazing record scattered throughout.
Here is my proposed album Radiation.com with a run time of 1:18:30
1. A Few Words For The Dead
2. The Answering Machine
3. Tumble Down The Years
4. Cathedral Wall
5. Born To Run
6. Enlightened
7. Costa Del Slough/Under The Sun
8. Go!
9. Interior Lulu
10. Three Minute Boy
11. House
Everyone can fight over what is right or wrong about this. I’m not sure I’m ok omitting Now She’ll Never Know but it won’t fit in my hypothetical album unless I create a hypothetical CD that holds 1 hour and 24 minutes of music.
Similar to the Radiation, the dot com tour was a quick 16 date set of shows at the end of 1999 with only France, England, The Netherlands and Germany being included. This period was, from my perspective, the nadir of the band’s arc of success with respect to chart impact, sales and overall reach. Luckily this also marked the end of their short-lived association with Castle Records. After this point the band was free to find their own path on their own, which they did. Utilizing the components which they had been establishing, Racket Records, Racket Studio, embracing of online fandom, and crowdfunding, the pieces were in place for them to make a fundamental, career defining decision on how they might survive as a band moving forward.
Recommended Listening Radiation: Under The Sun, The Answering Machine, Three Minute Boy, Now She’ll Never Know, Born To Run, Cathedral Wall, A Few Words For The Dead.
Recommended Listening Marillion.com: Go!, Enlightened, Tumble Down The Years, Interior Lulu, House
PURCHASE Radiation
PURCHASE Marillion.com
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