Background
After trying and failing to reach a wider audience with Holidays in Eden, Marillion figured it was time to go back to their roots and make a more progressive rock-oriented album again. Brave is a concept album, based on a news story Steve Hogarth heard on the radio about a girl who was taken into police custody after being found wandering the Severn Bridge. She did not know who she was, where she came from and refused to even speak. This inspired Hogarth to write a fictional story about this girl and what might have led to her being on the Severn Bridge in this state.
The band relocated to Marouatte castle in France for the duration of the recording of Brave. The influence of these surroundings can be heard throughout the album in a lot of haunting atmospherics. They even went into a cave which lay in the nearby area and taped some cave sounds which were used as background ambiance on the album. This recording concept was later used by Radiohead for their OK Computer album. As engineer, they recruited Dave Meegan, who had previously worked with Marillion on Fugazi. As for EMI, they really wanted the band to do a 'quick record' to gain some revenue, but this project progressively escalated, taking the band nine months to write and produce, partly because of Dave who would go through 'every single new tape made every day' each night listening for any riff or melody which sounded good enough to be included in the songs. This hard and tedious work paid off in the end.
Three singles from the album were released: "The Great Escape." (February 1994), "The Hollow Man" (March 1994) and "Alone Again in the Lap of Luxury" (April 1994).
The double-LP vinyl release of Brave features a double groove on the final side of the album, providing two endings to the story of this concept album. The first groove plays "The Great Escape" as heard on the CD, followed by 'Made Again', providing the happy ending; the second groove plays "The Great Escape (Spiral Remake)" and 20 minutes of water noise, providing the downer ending. "The Great Escape (Spiral Remake)" was later included as a bonus track on the remastered re-issue, along with one minute of the water noise.
Richard Stanley directed a 50 minute film version of Brave which was released one year after the album. This film takes the downer ending presented by the second double groove.
Read more about this topic: Brave (Marillion album)
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