Holidays in Eden is the sixth studio album by the British neo-prog band Marillion, released in 1991. Recorded at Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire and Westside Studios in London, it was the band's second album with vocalist Steve Hogarth and the first completely written without previous lead singer Fish.
Partly due to producer Christopher Neil, many of the songs feature a mainstream pop rock sound as opposed to progressive rock of previous works, and Hogarth has described Holidays in Eden as "Marillion's 'pop'est album ever". It reached number 7 in the UK Albums Chart.
Background
Hogarth said in 2012:
Release
Holidays in Eden was released in Europe on 24 June 1991 by EMI Records on CD, LP and cassette. It peaked at number 7 in the UK, spending 7 weeks in the charts,
Three singles, "Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)", "No One Can" and "Dry Land" were released, with the first preceding the album. "Cover My Eyes (Pain and Heaven)" was a re-write of Hogarth's earlier band How We Live's song "Simon's Car". "Dry Land" had previously been the title track of How We Live's only album released in 1987. Each of the three singles were minor hits in the UK attaining Top 40 spots.
At the Marillion Weekend 2011, the band performed the entire album with a slightly revised track order ("Waiting to Happen" moved to the fifth spot), the two additional tracks from the US CD and two unrelated songs as encores. This was released as part of the DVD/Blu-Ray set Holidays in Zélande, but also as a standalone CD Holidays in Eden 2011.
Cover art
As with the previous release, Seasons End, the cover art was designed by Bill Smith Studio using a monochromatic painting by illustrator Sarah Ball showing various stylised animals, a tree with a snake around it at the centre, and dominated by a darkish blue colour for the front cover. Holidays in Eden was Marillion's first album not to feature their original logo in any recognisable form, using the band name in a normal typeface instead.
Track listing
- Tracks 6, 8–14 of the 1998 remastered edition bonus disc had previously been unreleased.
<!-- ** I hid this away because it's unsourced, badly formatted and doesn't seem particularly relevant either - Wikipedia shouldn't contain every misprint. My CD has the tracks as printed!
Disc Two of the UK493722 release has a different sequence of the songs than what is listed :
01 A Collection
02 Cover my eyes (Acoustic)
03 The Epic (Fairground) (Demo)
04 Eric
05 How Can It Hurt
06 I Will Walk On Water (Alternate Mix)
07 No One Can (Demo)
08 The Party (Demo)
09 Spintering Heart (Demo)
10 Sympathy
11 Sympathy (Acoustic)
12 This Town (Demo)
13 Waiting To Happen (Demo)
14 You Don't Need Anyone (Demo) -->
Personnel
Marillion
- Steve Hogarth – vocals
- Steve Rothery – guitar; photography (1998 remastered edition)
- Mark Kelly – keyboards
- Pete Trewavas – bass and backing vocals
- Ian Mosley – drums and percussion
Technical personnel
- Christopher Neil – production and backing vocals
- Rob Eaton – recording and mixing
- Ted Jensen – mastering (at Sterling Sound, New York City)
- Peter Mew – 1998 digital remastering (November 1997 at Abbey Road, London)
- Bill Smith Studio – design
- Sarah Ball – illustration
- Paul Cox – photography
Charts
Weekly charts
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! scope="col"| Chart (1991)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
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{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
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! scope="col"| Chart (2022–2023)
! scope="col"| Peak<br />position
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Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
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! scope="col"| Chart (1991)
! scope="col"| Position
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! scope="row"| Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)
| 83
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! scope="row"| German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)
| 89
|}
References
;Notes
;Citations