When ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ was released, Marillion was in a bit of a rut for me. ‘Somewhere Else’ and the double album ‘Happiness Is The Road’ were good for what they were, but the alternative rock and progressive pop on those albums were not how I personally prefer Marillion to sound. Those sonic qualities have not completely vanished, but ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ sounds significantly closer to Marillion’s earthy, accessible take on progressive rock from the mid-nineties. In fact, the album’s main draw over its direct predecessors is that the songs simply have more surprises to offer.

My main issue with Marillion’s twenty-first century short, accessible material is that it frequently is significantly more upbeat than the longer tracks, which tend to be significantly darker. ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ goes a long way in restoring some sort of balance in that regard. The clever layered arrangements often create a foreboding undercurrent in the shorter tracks – which, admittedly, are still around the six-minute mark here – while a long track like ‘Montréal’ has, despite its pensive mood and a few dense, more traditionally progressive passages, a relatively upbeat atmosphere overall.

The shorter track that best illustrates the presence of darkness is ‘Power’. Initially, power seems to be a relatively downbeat track showcasing Marillion’s alternative pop side, mostly due to the atmosphere that Steve Rothery’s deceptively simple guitar riff manages to bring across, but the song houses a lot of drama in its relatively short six minute runtime. The chorus is overwhelmingly dramatic and features one of Steve Hogarth’s most passionate vocal performances to date, while the latter half of the song presents a new climax that is darker than the previous one multiple times. A rather unexpected highlight of the album.

However, the song that really sold me on ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ is opening track ‘Gaza’. Not because its seventeen and a half minutes makes it one of Marillion’s longest songs, but because no song in Marillion’s discography quite sounds like it. The main 7/4 riff sounds more aggressive than anything Steve Rothery ever played and there are a lot of dense rhythmical arrangements in the song. Marillion being Marillion, these are of course interspersed with more tranquil and emotional segments, all done very tastefully. Another highlight is the title track, which starts out sounding like another poppy, keyboard-oriented Marillion track, but grows into a powerful, theatrical prog song during its latter half.

Some reviews hail ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ as the grand return to Marillion’s progressive rock days. Personally, I would not necessarily agree with that, but they don’t really need to and moreover, isn’t the idea behind progressive music to, you know, progress? While the first half of the album is notably superior to the second half, I would probably consider ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ to be Marillion’s best post-‘Marbles’ album. Its follow-up ‘F.E.A.R.’ is more consistent, but the highlights on ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’ are good enough to suggest that Marillion may have entered its third youth.

Recommended tracks: ‘Gaza’, ‘Power’, ‘Sounds That Can’t Be Made’