Folklore<\/i><\/a>. The band had enough material left over to pencil in an EP release for this spring, but once they began developing the songs in earnest, old ones came back, new ones emerged and the running time for the release grew to over an hour of new music. Continuing themes explored in every BBT album since The Underfall Yard<\/i> (2009), Grimspound<\/i> delves into the essence of England, both the legends and the actual history of the nation, with an emphasis here on the Enlightenment values of science and reason and philosophy and art. (Low brow, BBT isn\u2019t.)<\/p>\nAn interesting development this time out is that, while co-founder \/ bassist Greg Spawton and lead voice \/ multi-instrumentalist David Longdon remain the band\u2019s chief songwriters, the door is open for others to contribute, with Danny Manners (keys) co-writing one track and Rikard Sj\u00f6blom (ex-Beardfish, guitar, keys, backing vocals) co-authoring two others here. The backing\u2014and occasional, brief lead\u2014vocals from Rachel Hall (violin, viola, cello) and Nick D\u2019Virgilio (ex-Spock\u2019s Beard, drums) are prominent as well. As he has on every album since Underfall<\/i>, Dave Gregory (ex-XTC) delivers supple, athletic guitar lines, while co-founder Andy Poole fills in the complex textures of these songs with acoustic guitar, keys and backing vocals.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Grimspound<\/i> opens in fine form with the 12-minute semi-epic \u201cBrave Captain,\u201d a tribute to British World War I flying ace Albert Ball that emerges in four parts, its lilting initial verses and choruses framed by dynamic instrumental sections. As always, from start to finish the eight-person lineup\u2019s musical troops are deployed with utmost care and precision, especially in the closing section, where piano and violin play off deep, throaty synths and bass pedals as Gregory, Sj\u00f6blom and Hall fill the sky with notes, all against a backdrop of surging, celestial Mellotron.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn The Racing Line\u201d is a relatively brief (just over five minutes) instrumental that picks up threads of Folklore<\/i>\u2019s \u201cBrooklands,\u201d starting out as a piano-violin duet before shifting into a headlong, jazz-tinged jam. Next up is among the strongest tracks here, \u201cExperimental Gentlemen,\u201d a 10-minute, five-part historical narrative without an ounce of fat on it. Its overture-like opening soon gives way to a melodic earworm of a chorus narrating the seaborne adventures of \u201cThe observers and collectors \/ Making order of the world.\u201d (In the detailed track-by-track liner notes, composer Spawton explains the so-called \u201cexperimental gentlemen\u201d were scientists who joined Captain Cook on his travels around the world in the 18th century.)<\/p>\n
The middle section of the album finds BBT mostly setting aside the expansiveness of its proggier excursions for an emphasis on the pastoral folk that is also an essential part of its musical identity. \u201cMeadowland\u201d is simply gorgeous, with gentle electric notes, violin, piano and organ complementing the beauty of the acoustic lead guitars and Longdon\u2019s keening vocals as he pays tribute to \u201cThe best of what we are \/ Poets and painters \/ And writers and dreamers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The title track ironically feels like one of the lesser songs here, a melancholy tune about the relentless march of time (\u201cWhat shall be made of us? \/ Our grand designs will come to dust \/ The gnawing of time\u201d), seen through the eyes of the title crow as he soars over England. \u201cGrimspound\u201d eventually shifts into an appealing, energetic bridge before closing with an a cappella choral rendering of Latin phrases that\u2019s quite nice in spite of feeling like a bit of a non sequitur.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ivy Gate\u201d is a ghost story of sorts, the highlight of which is the harmonizing between Longdon and guest vocalist Judy Dyble of Fairport Convention fame, offering hints of Simon & Garfunkel in its chanted \u201clie-la-la-la\u201d segments. Around 3:35 the rest of the band takes the baton for a fairly heavy mid-song jam spotlighting the rhythm section and Manners\u2019 muscular Hammond. (It must be said that former BBT lead guitarist Spawton has, since switching roles, rapidly established himself as among the best bassists in prog, an entirely necessary state of affairs when your rhythm section partner is the phenomenal D\u2019Virgilio.)<\/p>\n
This album\u2019s most expansive tune, \u201cA Mead Hall In Winter,\u201d began life as a two-minute acoustic guitar and piano instrumental composed by Sj\u00f6blom before ballooning into a 15-minute epic, with music by Sj\u00f6blom and Longdon and lyrics by Spawton. The hard-hitting opening sections pay tribute to the \u201cmerchants of light\u201d who gather at the mead hall for a kind of Enlightenment-era salon: \u201cMeet me at the mead hall in winter \/ Set the world to right \/ With song, science and stories \/ Hold back the fading light.\u201d The sentiment is reframed later on with an explicit reference back to \u201cMeadowland,\u201d just the sort of interconnectedness BBT weaves into many of its tunes: \u201cHere in science and art \/ And beauty and music \/ And friendship and love \/ You will find us \/ The best of what we are.\u201d In between, the band stretches out with several heady jams that give the song a burgeoning energy.<\/p>\n
Grimspound<\/i> closes with \u201cAs The Crow Flies,\u201d a beautiful, again rather pastoral tune that uses the titular crow\u2019s flight as a metaphor for grown children leaving home: \u201cTake flight to the skies \/ With hopes and dreams \/ Good journeys, my loves \/ Straight and true.\u201d In the latter portion of the song, the rhythm section shifts to a booming, elegiac cadence as Longdon hits the climactic chorus with everything he\u2019s got: \u201cTake flight to the far skies \/ Distant as you dare \/ Don\u2019t let anybody tell you \/ That you\u2019re too close to the suuuuun.\u201d That final, lingering high note makes for a spine-tingling finish.<\/p>\n
As has been the case for the band\u2019s last several releases, Grimspound<\/i> once again features stellar packaging and presentation designed by Andy Poole. Beyond the glossy cover illustration of Grimspound the crow by Sarah Louise Ewing awaits a gorgeous 22-page booklet featuring lyrics, detailed explanations of the origins of and stories behind each of the tracks, and full production credits. Even so, thanks to clever packaging, the sturdy four-panel wallet is still thinner than a standard jewel case.<\/p>\n
Grimspound<\/i> is another powerful entry in the cycle of top-notch Big Big Train releases that began with The Underfall Yard<\/i><\/a>. While it might come up short of the \u201cmasterpiece\u201d status this reviewer bestowed on Underfall<\/i>, that\u2019s principally a factor of the band itself having raised the bar so high. Grimspound<\/i> is thoughtfully composed, meticulously arranged and charismatically performed, a terrific album that further cements BBT\u2019s status as the top prog act going today.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":33141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8052],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-44933","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-big-big-train","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51995,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44933\/revisions\/51995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44933"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44933"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}