Against The Current: The Lost Marillion Album, or Fish's Last Stand.

If the band had known how close to the truth the title of their 1987 album Clutching At Straws came, they might have wanted to reconsider. Then again, Fish's tales of the tortured rock star Torch was nakedly autobiographical, with its harrowing account of Fish's worsening alcoholism in "Just For The Record" ("Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways / But When ut gets right down to it it's the same drunk haze") and "Sugar Mice" ("So if you want my adress it's number one at the end of the bar"), disillusion with the life as a rock star ("We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine / pretending the end isn't quite near / we make futile gestures, act to the cameras / with our made up faces and PR smiles") and overall atmosphere of despair. Don't get me wrong, Clutching At Straws isn't nearly as miserable-sounding as these lines make it sound, in fact, rarely has extended misery sounded as enticing and seductive as on Clutching At Straws. But all was indeed not well for Fish, and for his band mates in Marillion.

The success of Misplaced Childhood and number one smash "Kayleigh" had put the band into an endless cycle of touring, doing promotion and finally recording a new record. The sessions for Clutching At Straws had already proven to be difficult, with the dreaded 'musical differences' causing more than a few arguments, often in different states of intoxication, between band members. Then it was on the road again, tiredlessly, only to get back together to plot a follow up record. The band members were all tired, and tired of each other, when they reconvened. Fish usually complained about the music the rest of the band was working on "being shite", and the band members returned the compliments concerning his lyrics. In between all this strife, the band somehow managed to go into a studio called Tone Deaf (a sign? an omen?) to cut demos of four songs, then holed up in an isolated castle - clearly the most sensible idea fdor five often drunk guys starting to hate each other - to write, and managed to other demos of songs, before Fish announced his resignation from the band, and Marillion, for all intents and purposes, broke up. 

"Ha, photobomb, guys, technically I'm already gone..."

Marillion was reborn in short order, of course, recruitiong Steve Hogarth as new lead singer, and using a ton of the musical ideas the band had worked on in early 1988 for use on 1989's Seasons End, while Fish took a bunch of his lyrics to use on his next three solo albums. A live album (The Thieving Magpie) closed out the Fish era in a rather underwhelming way. This is of course the moment, where the One Buck Guy's alternate history generator goes into overdrive: What if EMI had insisted on one last Fish-led studio album? What if Fish, after long and unpleasant negociations, agrees that the band can use the demos they cut in early 1988, but refuses to go back into the studio to record anything else and forbids the band to record anything else for that album without him? 

Faced with Fish's 'take it or leave it' proposition and a demo tape of six songs, some not even fnished, the guys at EMI face a problem: These songs do not an album make, as a matter of fact, they're barely more than half an album. Faced with this dilemma, they go back to the vaults, and decide to go right back to the beginning of the band, promoting Fish's last album as a 'now and then' proposition. They pick the band's early epic "Grendel" as a way to fill out the album, only slightly regretting having used the original b-side version on the stopgap compilation album B'Sides Themselves earlier in the year. A solution is found: An alternate version, cut at Fair Deal Studios, is a rarity the fans don't have and can thus fulfill its function as quality filler to go with the material recorded, which also includes "Beaujolais Day", an unused song from the Clutching At Straws sessions. Thus, Against The Current is born, with title and artwork being a wink at the situation the band and its estranged lead singer were in. 

[Alternate History Generator Off]

So, Against the Current. "Beaujolais Day" is a fine, energetic opener, giving way to "Tic-Tac-Toe", "Sunset Hill", "Exile on Princes Street" and "Story From A Thin Wall" as the atmospheric ending of Side A. Side B would then open with the short "Shadows On The Barley", give way to the Fair Deal version of "Grendel" and then close out with the short instrumental "Voiceless In The Crowd". In order to create Against The Current I had to work with the fact that "Tic-Tac-Toe" and "Shadows On The Barley" were incomplete and stopped abruptly, but other than a quick fade out at an appropriate moment there wasn't much else I could do. And "Voiceless In The Crowd" was originally an entire song called "Voice In The Crowd", but there was something off about the track. The drumming sounded weird, and the entire track had this weird Phil Collins vibe to it, as well as sounding pretty samey to some of the songs on side one. So I basically got rid of the song and only kept the parts I liked, which was the beautiful opening and the closing of the song with some beautiful guitar playing. And since there is no more voice, well, voiceless, geddit?! 

This isn't in any wy a 'great lost album', but an eminently listenable album full of fine moments that deserve better than to be soon forgotten bonus tracks, so that's exactly what Against The Current delivers. Sure, some of it isn't as polished as the group's studio creations - given that these were simple guiding demos, but as a goodbye to Fish and Mark I of the band, I don't think I'm clutching at straws when I say that Against The Current is a pretty decent send off. Listen, and see if you'll agree.