Barely having been born in 1983 and not having heard a
single second of the debut record until embarking on a Marillion listening
project in early 2021, I don't have anything wise to say about the emergence of
the neo-prog movement, the impact SFAJT had on listeners who didn't know the
band, or how it felt for early members of the cult to see their little local
band explode into the world of major labels, professional production, and
grasping often futilely for chart success. I just have the music now, so that's
what I can comment on.
Track One - "Script For A Jester's Tear"
Allow me to immediately torpedo my "credibility"
as a guy with a blog by stating right off that I've never totally gotten SFAJT
- either the record as a whole, or the song that gives it its name. I
have always seen that there was something there.
The dichotomy is there from the start of the eight and a
half minute (yeesh) opener. What is Fish doing with this poncy affected
fake-RP accent singing in a cartoony high-pitched voice about being broken
hearted? How can anyone take this seriously? And then - and it
helps if you have one of the newer remasters so all the track sound crisp - the
keyboards lead us into a more appealing melody that holds for a moment on the
somewhat clever conceit of losing on both the swings and the roundabouts, until
Fish declares "the game" to be "OOOOOVER!" This is
the equivalent to a "drop" in a modern EDM song. Now Mark's
keyboard part is locked in, sounding passionate, with the band is punching in
to augment it however they can, before exploding into a rousing version of the
opening riff providing the proper support to Fish repeating the "here I am
once more" declaration. It's at moments around 2:00 that I do get
it, however transiently. What early Fish lacks as a technical singer -
things like ability to consistently hit the right key - he can at his best
overcome through sheer intensity. You never doubt his total conviction,
that he's feeling these things.
The track evolves as a song of two halves. The first
is punchier, if a bit repetitious. The second has fewer appealing parts
as far as vocal melody, although I do like the "promised wedding now a
wake" part. Here it gets a little much with the constant questioning
whether the subject of the song still loves the singer. Not really the
question to be asking as a wedding guest. Fish used to introduce this
song as the kind of thing "you" write after "you" break up
with someone to be more like your depressed poets and artists, so... kind of an
unforced error there, dude. Expect plenty more heartbreak songs, done
better, in the future. It's worth reiterating yet again that my lack of
engagement is a bit of a minority view - SFAJT (the song) definitely resonated
big time with the audience at the time, and is one of the two big fan favorites
of the album.
Track Two - "He Knows You Know"
Ah, problems, problems. I don't have all that much to
say about "He Knows You Know" except that it mostly clicks.
Definitely a weird song, but I find the way the melody and the music interplay
appealing. There's something just very pleasing about the verses,
especially the pre-chorus ("you've got venom in your stomach...")
bits. Maybe reeling it in a bit and committing to a much simpler
keyboard/guitar part than usual did the band some good, because this is solid.
Not amazing, but solid.
Track Three - "The Web"
Now we get to the good shit. Of the attempted epics in
the Marquee-years* Marillion, "The Web" is the one that works best
for me. Sure it's long and runs the risk of being a bit turgid to
listeners who don't like the sound, and the prose veers to purple. Maybe
as a frequent shut-in I immediately connect to the narrative of a character
unable to take the next step out of a prison of self-obsession. The vocal
delivery sells the natural transition from "advise, advise, advise
me" to "the changes have to be made" to "I've conquered my
fears." The reference to the jester neatly sets up "The
Web" as the bookend to "Script For A Jester's Tear," as our lead
singer's avatar finds the strength to carry on**. As usual, Mark is the
most obvious driver of things musically - it's just a great keyboard riff - but
the song wouldn't be the same without Pete propelling things along with just
the right amount of bass for each moment. I normally tune out longer
instrumental passages, whereas "The Web"'s instrumental break doesn't
feel over-long at all, thanks to probably the first really great lyrical Stever
Rothery guitar solo. What could have ended up as the most dated part of
the song - the twiddly ren-faire keyboard part that starts at 6:24 - is a
breath of relief after the triumphant declaration that the decisions have been
made now. The character gets a big W, and so does Marillion for this one.
Track Four - "Garden Party"
Probably the song that's grown on me the most. Part of
it is sheer force of repetition (first Marillion single to really do anything
on the charts, became and remains a fan and live favorite, etc.).
Although also a bit overlong, "Garden Party" is a bit of
wicked fun for the most part. Supposedly the inspiration was Fish
bringing his working-class energy to a Cambridge party and being horrified by
what he saw, and he both writes and delivers the lyric with the sort of gleeful
savagery that fans were quickly learning to expect from him. Meanwhile.
the band goes through a bunch of time signatures and noodles the way prog
groups do and don't really seem to be on the same page, but at least there's
plenty of energy. I don't always get how critical some Marillion fans
(and a certain hulking former Marillion frontman) get of Mick's drumming, but
maybe here having a drummer more willing to stick to the beat would have made
the band gell more and made the song feel like less of a mess. I do quite
like the buildup to what resolves into the "I'm punting..." riff
through pretty much the whole ending. Lyrically, the one-liners here are
nice, especially "social climbers polish ladders," but even if you're
not in the mood for wordplay, the vocal performance should sell anyone on the
notion that you do not want to be at this party, or more to the point,
be the sort of person who'd be invited.
Track Five - "Chelsea Monday"***
Throughout his career Fish has drifted in and out of writing
narratives, and it's a hat I wish he'd wear more often. Here we get a
story about someone probably not named Chelsea but passing through Chelsea, one
of those girls who's convinced she'll be a star. "She's playing the
actress in this bedroom scene," oof. There's a great example of
song-lyric synergy once the character starts "drifting" through
"the labyrinth of London" over a sparse guitar riff with bits of
interspersed keys that feels lonely and wandering. That and the following
alliterative lyrics:
Perform to scattered
shadows on the shattered cobbled aisles
Would she dare recite soliloquies at the risk of stark applause?
pretty much have the listener prepared for the character's
inevitable lonely death. Held back a little by the song being overlong
for something so slow, but still worth a good listen or five.
Track Six - "Forgotten Sons"
More than any other song here, our Troubles-inspired closer
lives down to Marillion's reputation of throwing a bunch of bits together and
calling it a song. I certainly can see things to appreciate. I like
the driving intro riff, I like the way the lyrics sketch out a disaffected
young man and how he'd end up becoming a briefly famous and soon forgotten
architect of violence, and, well, I enjoy listening to most of the bits.
Especially the limerick-style bit about the parents, and the "who goes
there?!" bit, and, well, the various bits. "Forgotten
Sons" effectively is as much sound collage as song, but doesn't really
commit to doing that either. Do I like it? Yeah, overall. Do
I ever turn it off? Nope. Is it actually a good song?
Ehhhhhh...
NON-ALBUM - "Charting The Single"
Kind of clever, making the song destined to be a single's
B-side all about the joys of being single. CTS has "throwaway"
written all over it, with a lyric that's heavy on wordplay (I think, anyway -
can't ever be arsed to pay attention to it) and light on substance, and a
non-chorus that's basically one nice riff over and over. Widely viewed as
the nadir of Mick being unable or unwilling to put aside his Neil Peart
ambitions to play what a song actually demanded - he'd be kicked out of
Marillion soon after Script was released - and, yeah, he's not actually
playing in time, is he? My other main impression is that no matter how
many times I listen, I will never not mishear a lyric in this song, written in
the early '80s, as "got an e-mail."
Overall thoughts
Listening to Script For A Jester's Tear in part in
the gym now, I hear some of the same things I heard when I began a Marillion
listening project in 2021, one that would quickly evolve into a Marillion and
Fish listening project once I appreciated what the big man brought to the
table. I hear a lot of vigor from an excited and exciting young band
taking a no longer fashionable flavor of rock music and making it their
own. I hear a singer who's a little too wordy but who's got a lot to say
and mostly clever ways to say it. I hear a band that needs to tighten up
and learn how to write coherent songs. And can that singer please cool it
with all the tuneless shrieking and goofy voices and just, you know, sing,
like a real musician?
This was originally going to be an asterisk'd footnote, but
I think it's worth making in the main body text. At the risk of further
displaying my antipathy towards the actual results (more so than the idea) of
prog, I can't say I get excited when I see that a record has no short
songs. Well, only one track on Script clocks in at under seven
minutes. This is in my experience usually a good marker for an artist
whose ambition outpaces their songcraft skills. Some longer songs
need every minute to make their full impact in a way that a four minute version
never could... and those are the distinct minority. So statistically, if
every song on your record is above, say, five minutes, some of them are going
to be way longer than they need to be, as is your record.
Look, I get that the raw, primordial, unpolished form of
anything is going to resonate more intensely with a certain crowd. Honing
one's craft almost inevitably comes with unlearning one's ability to break all
the rules and generally with getting older and less abrasive. The energy
that comes from youth and newness can't be faked or replicated. All
true. On the other hand, call me old (I am), but I can think of very few
artists whose first record is my favorite. People who hone their craft
tend to get better at it. From where I'm sitting, Script is a
start. It's far, far, away from being a masterpiece.
Favorite track (album tracks only): “The
Web”
Runner up: “Chelsea
Monday”
Least favorite: “Script
For A Jester’s Tear”
Overall rating: 3/5
Definitive running list of records by Fish/Marillion that I
have profiled so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their
quality
1) Market Square
Heroes (single)
2) Script For A
Jester’s Tear
We continue with Fugazi whenever I get around to it!
*The Marquee was the club where they honed their act and built their original
original cultish following. So, what I mean by "Marquee era" is basically the stuff on Script
and the other releases from 1983 and earlier, including the singles.
**He’ll always do so.
***As a random bit of trivia, the whispered "she was
only dreaming" part inexplicably came back nearly twenty years later when
the band wrote a song about dreams, "If My Heart Were A Ball, It Would
Roll Uphill." Maybe the presence of a sample from from those days
inspired the band to wake up and record Anoraknophobia, one of the few
Marillion records since 1990 that was not recorded under a level of
sedation that would kill a livelier band.****
****Chill, I'm just kidding.*****
*****Sort of.
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