Clutching at Straws is the fourth studio album by the British neo-prog band Marillion, released on June 22, 1987.

The character of Torch (supposedly a descendant of the Jester from earlier album sleeves) is a 29-year-old out-of-work man whose life is a mess.

Since Torch has no other real outlet at his disposal, he ends up in bars, hotel rooms, and on the road, screaming and drunk, thus, he is described as beyond redemption or hope.

The song "Incommunicado" describes the pitfalls of the business, and how pressures in real life exerted by the band's US label Capitol Records were crushing in from outside for them to either succeed or get dropped by the company, which would happen to Marillion anyway a few years later.

"[7]In 1987, David Hepworth wrote in Q, "Musically, Clutching at Straws doesn't depart far from the educated arrangements of previous albums.

"[10] John Franck of AllMusic described the album as "perhaps Marillion's most unheralded masterpiece" which "showcases some of the band's most satisfying compositions, including the magnificent 'Warm Wet Circles' and 'That Time of the Night (The Short Straw)' ... Tour opener 'Slainte Mhath' is simple and elegant, building to its dramatic crescendo only to be upstaged by 'Sugar Mice' – quite simply, one of Marillion's best commercial singles ever".

[5] In 2015, while including Clutching at Straws in the "50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time", Rolling Stone stated that "Marillion's fourth album balanced melody and melodrama" and commented on the "atmospheric production and guitarist Steve Rothery's spacious, relatively restrained guitar (which split the difference between Genesis' Steve Hackett and U2's the Edge)".

Much of the leftover musical material was then used on the official fifth Marillion album Seasons End, with new lyrics penned by John Helmer and the new singer Steve Hogarth, while some of the original lyrics for the music ended up in one form or another on Fish's solo albums – for example, the "Voice in the Crowd" concept would inform much of Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors.

CD 1 Clutching at Straws (2018 Andy Bradfield & Avril Mackintosh Re-Mix) Note: Includes the extended version (with a guitar solo) of "Going Under" as track 4.