Hope For The Future

Lyrics

Yeah, something really went wrong here. OK, it starts off innocuously enough, with a nice bit of ominous bass and guitar funk. Steve H comes in with "I've been feeling kind of down and loose/Like a Rosicrucian pope", and if this was any other song, I might look that up and try to figure out what the heck he's talking about, but here, THE HORNS. OH GOD, THE HORNS. Really, they remind me of nothing so much as the song "Can't Wait To Be King" from The Lion King, so... there's your first ever Marillion/Disney comparison. Enjoy. And, well, this is not a good fit for the band, at all. It creates a system error in my brain. I actually cannot handle these disparate elements. I just can't listen to this. I never, never skip tracks when I'm listening to albums, as a rule, but I often have to break that rule in this case, because this actually is sort of painful.

Maybe there's something salvagable in there, but I can't find it due to extreme aversion to actually hearing this track, and, well the lyrics don't exactly give me great hope (for the future! Eh? Eh?). I mean, "Madam, I'm Adam, I'm a palindrome"? Really, Steve?

However, while on a purely visceral level, I find this song less pleasant to listen to than any other Marillion song, ever, I am far more willing to forgive them for this than something like "Built-In Bastard Radar". Reason being as follows. "Hope For The Future" is the very definition of a failed experiment, and if you don't risk a few of those, you'll never make the succesful experiments either, and those are pretty essential for sustaining a career for as long as this band have without becoming completely stale. "Built-In Bastard Radar" is just lazy, unimaginative crap .