Yeah, I agree, it would have been better to just play all of one of the three long epics from the first two albums, instead of busting two of them up into medley form, but I guess they wanted to play something from all four albums, and going with All of the Above would have left nada from BAF. It will be even more challenging when/if they release a 5th album and tour again. I suspect that tour will be even more medley-happy.
I think if/when we get to a 5th Album Tour, a medley of
SMPT:e songs should cover that album, perhaps as the encore. Start with AOTA, segue into a bit of WANSL and MT, then close with the last part of MNW. Condense all of that into about 30-35 minutes and you've got a solid album encore that frees up 2 hours of the main show for four other albums...which is daunting, to say the least. I mean, of the five songs on the new album, only "Into The Blue" was played consistently, with "Shine" and "Black As The Sky" having one less play, and "Kaleidoscope" having two less plays (at 25 plays). "Beyond The Sun" only had ten plays total, and luckily one of those was at Cologne (for the upcoming DVD!). Then again, their second album's title track was rarely played live until the Whirld Tour.
I think a fifth album probably won't have all of its songs played live, which will be a shame, but they could surprise us. They could do the whole album, and only do one or two songs from
The Whirlwind, and only one epic from BAF. That would take up about 50 or so minutes of the remaining 2 hours, leaving enough for an album's worth of new music to be played live.
But...who knows when we'd have to worry about any of this? 2017? Neal (and Mike) will have two new albums to release and tour on between now and the better part of 2015, and Mike will also have Winery Dogs stuff. Roine will undoubtedly have a new TFK album at some point, as well as who knows what. And Marillion is probably working on a new album soon, so they'll be busy with that. I don't see Transatlantic reconvening until 2016, LATE 2016 even, with an album and tour in 2017 at the earliest, but all the guys will be 3 years older by then, so we'll see how life and health hold up for these guys!
-Marc.