Photos of Steve Hackett live at Hammersmith Apollo, May 10th

It wasn’t a reverential note-for-note reproduction of the original recordings, but neither was it a ground-up re-imagining that didn’t respect the original versions.

Weekend-long fan conventions have been a regular feature of the Marillion calendar since the first one at an out-of-season Pontins back in 2002

Despite the bands occasional use of the term “prog” in promotion, they don’t go in for grandiose epics.

Loitered Lens captures the action at UFO’s gig at the O2, Oxford. Photography from Trebuchet Magazine

The new material stands up well alongside the old, and marked them out as something far more than a mere nostalgia act, rather a band who still have something to say.

Parts of the album sound like a far lighter version of Touchstone, with the dual male-female harmony lead vocals recalling that band’s early years when Cottingham handled a greater proportion of the vocals. That feeling pervades, whether it’s on rockier up-tempo numbers or lush ballads.

In many previous years any one of these might have been a strong candidate for my album of the year.