Seasons End

Lyrics

No apostrophe, note. Now, that's perfectly reasonable; "seasons end" makes sense as a statement of fact. Seasons do indeed end. However, the lyric is "Say goodbye to seasons end", which is absolute nonsense, from a gramatical standpoint. THERE SHOULD BE AN APOSTROPHE. Well, "Say goodbye to seasons, end" would work as a set of two instructions, I guess, but there's definitely some punctuation gone astray here.

Onto less pedantic points; this is the title track from Marillion's fifth album, the first with Hogarth at the helm. It's very much a bridge between the two eras; the keyboards that would later fade into the background are very much in centre stage here, in part because a lot of the music was recorded for a totally different set of lyrics before Fish left the band. It's an intriguingly disjointed way to make an album, but perhaps surprisingly, it really doesn't show. It's actually among the most slick sounding of their albums, possibly as a result of overcompensating for its odd origins.

There is something decidedly wintery about the tone of the keyboards on this album (and I don't particularly expect that to make any actual sense), it's especially evident when they break out into solos, each note a unique snowflake. Yeah, even the ones that are identical. This song has the second best example, five minutes in, just after it appears to have ended. It's probably the best moment in a song that wants to make some grand, impressive statement about global warming and change and what have you, but is really just an overly drawn out and pompous version of JJ72's Snow. Season's end, but bloody hell, they take their sweet time about it.