Review by Kevin Barrie.
On Hallowe’en, Marillion returned to Toronto, playing to an almost full house at the Danforth Music Hall, having last played in Toronto in 2012. Bringing a visually oriented show featuring a custom-made video, the band was promoting their most recent album, Fuck Everyone and Run (FEAR). The band have 14 studio albums with the current line-up of musicians, which has remained exactly the same since 1989’s Season’s End. Their most recent album, the aforementioned FEAR, has charted higher than any of their albums since 1987’s Clutching At Straws, and has been receiving mostly positive reviews in the press.
It is notable that the band’s current touring setlist is largely made up of songs from the last ten to twelve years of their near-forty year career, indicating that their fans continue to enjoy their current music and they are not living off past hits from the eighties. Many songs from FEAR were performed. The band opened with The Invisible Man and closed with Neverland, both of which are from the album Marbles (2004).
In an interview, guitarist Steve Rothery indicated that the songs for this tour were chosen with the help of a survey of North American fans. Having said this, the planned encores for the Danforth show were scrapped in favor of the song Kayleigh, after it was requested from a particularly noisy fan, with a positive response from the crowd. This song was from 1986’s Misplaced Childhood, the band’s biggest selling album of all time, and was followed by the joined-together songs of Lavender/Bitter Suite/Heart of Lothian, which is how the band has been performing them since the early nineties.
Opening for the band was John Wesley, who has been involved with the band since the 1990s as a guitar tech. Wesley is also known for performing extensively as a touring guitarist/vocalist for Porcupine Tree. Wesley performed by himself, playing tracks featuring just electric guitar and vocals, or to backing tracks. He is promoting his most recent album, A Way You’ll Never Be.
Setlist:
The Invisible Man
Power (with intro jam)
Living in F E A R
Wave
Mad
Afraid of Sunlight
The New Kings: I. Fuck Everyone and Run
The New Kings: II. Russia’s Locked Doors
The New Kings: III. A Scary Sky
The New Kings: IV. Why Is Nothing Ever True?
King
Neverland
Encore 1:
El Dorado: I. Long-Shadowed Sun
El Dorado: II. The Gold
El Dorado: III. Demolished Lives
El Dorado: IV. F E A R
El Dorado: V. The Grandchildren of Apes
Encore 2:
Kayleigh
Lavender
Bitter Suite (Blue Angel)
Heart of Lothian
All photos by Paul Barrie
©2016. Please DO NOT copy or use without permission.
John Wesley:
Marillion:
