Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery has announced the final two Steve Rothery Band shows of 2016 before Marlllion begin their world tour in April.

The dates are Montgomery Hall in Wath on Saturday March 5, and The Junction in Cambridge on Sunday 6th. Titled “The Ghosts and Garden Parties”, they’ll be playing his instrumental solo album “The Ghosts of Pripyat” and Marillion’s “Misplaced Childhood”, which he has previously played in full with Martin Jakubsk from the tribute band Stillmarillion on vocals.

With former Marillion frontman Fish also touring Misplaced Childhood, finishing at Islington Assembly on 20th April, the coming months will see a classic album peformed by two different bands, both of which contain one original member of the band that originally recorded it. Has that ever happened before?

This isn’t really a review as such. Because by the end of each of the three nights there’s not much more you can say beyond “Wibble”. A total of seven hours of some of the most emotially moving and life-affirming music in rock, including the albums “Anoraknophobia” and “Marbles” played in full, and a remarkable greatest hits set on the last night.

One of the things that makes Marillion so special is their audience. There are few other bands who can inspire such loyalty over such a long period of time; there were people in Wolverhampton who’d travelled from all over the world to be there. The streets and pubs of the city were filled with Marillion t-shirts all weekend.

Marillion’s longevity is remarkable, and much if may well be down to Steve Hogarth replacing Fish around the point when they’d reached their commercial peak four albums into their career. It forced them to reinvent themselves, something they’ve continued to do ever since. They’re not a band to stick to a successful formula album after album,

Steve Rothery is the best guitarist of his generation, and his emotive and lyrical playing has always been the heart of the band’s sound. On Friday night we got a double helping; the support was The Steve Rothery Band, playing most of his solo album “The Ghosts of Pripyat”.

And many thanks to Mark Kelly for the photo pass for Friday night. He must have done something to upset the lighting engineer, because he ddn’t get much spotlight all night, and this was the only good photo I was able to take of him.

In an age where many of their contemporaries have long become little more than their own tribute acts, Marillion may well have hit their peak as a live band in the past two or three years.  Freed from any need to chase contemporary trendsor or to play old hits on the nostalgia circuit, they’re comfortable in their own skins, are on the same page as their enthusiastic fanbase, and play material from right across their 35 year career.

Cloud Atlas – Beyond the Vale

Yet another York-based band (Is there something in the water?), Cloud Atlas is the band put together by Heidi Widdop following the dissolution of Stolen Earth. Their impressive début album is big widescreen rock with an epic scope, with Heidi’s distinctive bluesy vocals setting them apart from many of their obvious peers. But this album’s sound is as much about Martin Ledger’s soaring melodic lead guitar, with strong echoes of Marillion’s Steve Rothery.

Gazpacho – Demon

Norway’s Gazpacho have come up with one of the darkest and most sinister-sounding records of 2014. It’s what Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden might have sounded like if Mark Hollis had spent a lot of time listening to Black Sabbath. Sinister violin-led pastoral soundscapes with are intercut with bursts of hard rock, motifs recur across the album, and there’s even an irruption of accordion-led central European folk at one point. An ambitious album which is by no means an easy listen, but one where you can keep finding new layers after many listens.

Knifeworld – The Unravelling

A major step forward for Kavus Torabi’s eight-piece band, and reflects their current live sound far more than any of their previous recordings. It’s a record that takes psychedelia, jazz, hard rock and all kinds of other things, and puts them in a blender to produce something that sounds quite unlike anyone else. Fans of the late, great Frank Zappa should find a lot to like about this record, as should anyone who thinks there should be more bassoons in rock.

Luna Rossa – Secrets and Lies

Luna Rossa started out as a side-project from Panic Room emphasising the acoustic side of Anne-Marie Helder’s and Jon Edwards’ music, but seems to have taken on a life of it’s own. Their second album is a logical progression from the first; perhaps not quite as eclectic, but with a slightly clearer musical identity. Luna Rossa still defy easy genre pigeonholing, though the album does show occasional hints of artists as varied as Goldfrapp and Renaissance. There’s some very raw heart-on-sleeve emotion, with the music revolving around and complementing Anne-Marie’s always remarkable vocals.

Steve Rothery – The Ghosts of Pripyat

This Kickstarter-funded project is Steve Rothery’s first proper solo album in more than three decades as lead guitarist of Marillion. It’s an instrumental album with a band including Panic Room’s Yatim Halimi and Mr So and So’s Dave Foster, Rothery’s lyrical and emotional playing both soars and rocks, the numbers building in intensity from slow-burning beginnings. The whole thing shows just why Rothery is one of the best guitarists of his generation, one of the few players good enough to pull this sort of thing off without descending into self-indulgence.

Marillion’s guitarist Steve Rothery and his band came to Bush Hall on a wet Saturday night for a sold-out gig to mark the end of his short UK tour to promote his solo album “The Ghosts of Pripyat”. He bought the five piece band he put together to record the album, including Yatim Halimi of Panic Room on bass and Dave Foster of Mr So and So as a second guitarist.

Support was the Italian four-piece RanestRane, playing to a back-projection of first part of “2001″. They played melodic contemporary neo-prog, with effects-laden guitar and the occasional foray into Hammond-heavy hard rock. It had its moments, and it was all skilfully played, but much of the time it felt a little generic, and by the end you found yourself paying far more attention to Stanley Kubrick’s visuals that the music. The fact that the drummer sang lead which meant they lacked a proper frontman may not have helped here.

Steve Rothery and his band began with his new solo album “The Ghosts of Pripyat” played in full. They recovered from a slight hiccough early on with guitar problems at the end of the opening number “Morpheus” to deliver a very impressive first set. The material, all of it instrumental, comes over strongly live. It’s powerful and emotional stuff, built around Rothery’s lyrical guitar playing, but far more than just an excuse for extended soloing.

Rothery is one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, casting such a shadow over subsequent waves of progressive rock that other guitarists in the scene either end up sounding like him or must try hard not to. He’s equally at home supplying effects-laden atmospherics and textures, or soaring lead lines. His playing is always melodic, with a less-is-more approach that doesn’t waste a note, and the first hour demonstrated all of this.

There were times that resemble Marillion without vocals, but with two guitars the textures were often denser and darker. While it’s obviously Rothery’s show, Dave Foster still made his mark, sometimes playing muscular riffs while Rothery added atmospheric fills, and has a few spotlight moments of his own, his metal-orientated shredding contrasting with Rothety’s own distinctive style.

After the final notes of title track of the album died away, Rothery announced that they’ve be taking a short break, and would be back with some Marillion songs.

This is the point where it might all have gone horribly wrong; on a live album recorded in Rome earlier in the year the second half was something of an anticlimax, largely down to the guest vocalists not doing the material justice. Not so tonight; Steve Rothery drafted in Martin Jakubski from the tribute band Stillmarillion, a singer who knows exactly how to bring the classic early material to life on stage.

It started slowly, with the early B-side “Cinderella Search” and the reflective title track on “Afraid of Sunlight”, the only Hogarth-era song played. But things really caught fire with the dark intensity of “Incubus”, the disturbing song written a generation before ‘revenge porn’ was ever a thing. With “Chelsea Monday”, “Fugazi”, and the encore medley from “Misplaced Childhood” the band took the roof off.

This was material from the Fish era that the present incarnation of Marillion never play nowadays in regular touring sets, and sung with all the high notes intact rather than the rearranged versions Fish has performed in recent years. It was the closest thing to Fish-era Marillion in their mid-80s prime as you’re likely to get in 2014.

With the majestic first half and the strongly crowd-pleasing second half, this was a life-affirming occasion.

This review also appears in Trebuchet Magazine

Rothery’s previous side-project was the collaboration with vocalist Hannah Stobart, The Wishing Tree, resulting in two semi-acoustic albums with an ethereal All About Eve vibe about them. The Steve Rothery Band is something altogether different. With fellow-guitarist Dave Foster (Mr So and So) and a rhythm section of bassist Yatim Halimi (Panic Room) and drummer Leon Parr it’s a guitar-led rock instrumental project. The whole thing began life with Rothery’s appearance at a guitar festival in Poland, documented in the earlier “Live in Plovdiv”, which in turn led to a successful Kickstarter project for an album “The Ghosts of Pripyat”, due in September.

“Live in Rome” records the band’s second live appearance, and presents an intriguing snapshot of the work in progress on the album. Instrumental guitar music can bring back memories of those 1980s shred-metal albums released on Mike Varney’s shrapnel records, but this record has little in common with those. Rothery’s playing has always been about melody and textures rather than technical showing off, and the first half of this record is Steve Rothery doing exactly what he does best, backed by an excellent supporting cast.

Many of the instrumental pieces follow a similar form; a slow-burning opening that gradually builds in intensity over ten minutes or more. They’re neither overly rigid compositions nor loose unstructured jams, but manage to hit the sweet spot between the two, and despite being tight there’s a raw intensity to the playing from the whole band. It feels like the gig must have been something very special to have been present at. This is far, far more than just an hour’s worth of guitar solos.

The second disk sees the band joined by vocalists Manuela Milanese and Alessandro Carmassi plus keyboard player Riccardo Romano for a run through some highlights from the Marillion back catalogue, featuring the likes of “Easter”, “Sugar Mice” and even the very early B-side “Cinderella Search”. They’re close to the originals instrumentally, completely with Rothery’s magnificent solos, but with some interestingly different takes on the vocals.

As a taster for the forthcoming studio album and as a recording in its own right this is an excellent record, and it will be very interesting to hear how these live takes of the songs compare with the finished results in the studio.

A taster from the forthcoming album “The Ghosts of Pripyat”, featuring a guest appearance from Steve Hackett.