I've been quite critical of Marillion's work since their concept album 'Brave' back in the early 90s. Though 'Anoraknophobia' improved things, it still wasn't at the same level of creativity as they accomplished with that classic album that was meant to be played "loud and with the lights off."

Finally, in 2004 Marillion takes back on their "brave" sound and brings it to the next level, with their 'Marbles' album. This is a production where there are some extraordinary songs that have a 100% Marillion sound, with accents reminding of Pink Floyd and Genesis carefully sprinkled all through most of the longer tracks, which makes it is extremely difficult to pick favorite tracks. Perhaps the promotional "You're Gone" I could live without, but even that one is far from bad.

All in all, my favorite tracks are:
-The Invisible Man: strong "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" influences to be felt in the beginning, due to its obscure nature, for the most part.
-Angelina: a more contemporary sound to it, but also bringing to mind works such as "Wish you were here".
-Neverland: Strong, up front Marillion, starting with H and a piano and bringing band members in as it grows, displaying some of the craftiest production details in the album.
-The four "Marbles": much more like the Marillion we learned to love in 'Brave'.

The album comes not just as a great musical production, but also an attempt to break traditional music marketing and distribution schemes, something that they attempted their previous album, but didn't quite succeed at due to the shortcomings of their distribution deal. What you will listen to in 'Marbles' is an album whose production AND distribution was taken off the gound by thousands of fans that pre-ordered it even before it was recorded (something I was proud to be a part of).

Once you listen to it, in spite of the album's cost, I think you will agree that breaking the ties from a recording contract can yield things that are extremely worth paying a little more for. And if you feel you can't get enough Marillion with this CD, there's more for you to dig into: go to Marillion.com and get the double CD, which includes much more, but in particular one of the best Marillion songs I've ever heard, called "Ocean Cloud". They definitely delivered on their promise to save some great stuff for the double-album edition that they made available, but they were also able to bring together some great material for this version of 'Marbles'.