This is a story about many things: love, loss, determination, fate, tragedy and friendship.<\/p>\n
In the early 1990s, future Big Big Train frontman David Longdon was an aspiring singer-songwriter with a prodigious gift but not much to show for it; his band The Gifthorse aimed high, but never made it out of the pubs. In the midst of that span, Longdon\u2014whose rangy, resonant voice bears a notable resemblance to Peter Gabriel\u2019s\u2014was invited to audition for the lead vocalist position in Genesis after Phil Collins\u2019 departure. He worked closely with the band for six months during 1996, only to have Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford choose Ray Wilson instead.<\/p>\n
Disappointed but not defeated, Longdon went home and went back to work. In combination with the death of his father and a painful divorce, this trio of setbacks informed the new songs that emerged over the course of the next few years. Recorded in fits and starts across the early 2000s, Longdon\u2019s self-produced-engineered-and-released solo debut Wild River<\/i> eventually appeared in 2004. The album showcased an eclectic hybrid, a sort of progressive folk-pop, and featured Longdon on vocals, guitars, mandolin, keyboards, flute and percussion, supplemented by a core band of friends Andy Lynn (drums), Beth Noble (violin and viola), and Andy Moore (bass), as well as guests including guitarists Dave Gregory (later a bandmate in Big Big Train) and Michael Brown (who mixed the original 2004 edition of the album).<\/p>\n
Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, the album was not finished or packaged to Longdon\u2019s satisfaction. Even as his career blossomed after joining Big Big Train (BBT) in 2009, he hoped eventually to revisit Wild River<\/i> and improve it however he could. He and his friends Greg Spawton (BBT founder) and Rob Aubrey (BBT producer) spoke of it many times, even as other projects were prioritized ahead of it; Longdon\u2019s vision for a reissued Wild River<\/i> remained an oft-remarked upon but unrealized goal when he passed away suddenly in November 2021.<\/p>\n
The long-imagined re-release of Wild River<\/i> could easily have been left on the shelf at this juncture, if not for his friends. Instead, with the blessing of Longdon\u2019s partner Sarah Louise Ewing, Aubrey spent many hours across many months working with the master tapes, striving to capture the sound he and Longdon had discussed, and then Spawton reissued the album on English Electric Recordings, Big Big Train\u2019s \u201chouse label.\u201d <\/p>\n
A warm ending to a sad story, yes\u2014but what about the music? <\/p>\n
As an album, Wild River<\/i> is lovely and lively and emotional and warmly crafted, a 12-song compendium of shiny, clever, progressive pop. Its instrumentation is primarily but not exclusively acoustic and its rather folkish tone is frequently disrupted with progressive flourishes and elements. <\/p>\n
Opener \u201cAlways\u201d is an upbeat, airy, sophisticated folk-rock number whose sonic qualities demonstrate immediately the commitment Aubrey brought to his task: every element is crisp and clean and the multiple layers of instruments and vocals ripple with brightness and energy. From that promising beginning, the album shows the playful side of Longdon\u2019s nature as the surprisingly sunny and bubbly \u201cHoney Trap\u201d veers between fast and slow, urgent and languorous line readings, with harmony vocals, flute and other elements coming in and out. You can sense Longdon flexing his creative muscles, saying here, look what I can do. <\/p>\n
The cheekily named \u201cMandy\u201d features mandolin and a soaring vocal performance that reminds of Steve Winwood; a lively closing jam furthers the sense of Longdon reveling in his own compositional and arranging chops. \u201cAbout Time\u201d has a rather Moody Blues feel in places, especially when the Mellotron and bass pedals make an entrance at the front end of the extended jam that carries the second half of the 5:46 tune. \u201cVertigo\u201d opens with an upbeat, pastoral, violin-and-mandolin tone that feels like a precursor to some of its author\u2019s work with Big Big Train. <\/p>\n
Quickly, though, you realize it\u2019s about the divorce: \u201cLook out below \/ All my surroundings are spinning around \/ Must be the masochist in me \/ That wants another chance,\u201d he sings in this churning, emotional number. The songwriting-as-psychotherapy continues with \u201cWild River\u201d: \u201cThese lean times \/ Can be character building \/ Can be soul destroying,\u201d he sings as the music does a long steady build, adding strings, bass pedals, Mellotron and electric guitar. As it breaks down in the closing section, two things happen: you realize that this is essentially a blues ballad, and that Longdon is a singer of uncommon power. <\/p>\n
The tonal contrast could hardly be greater when \u201cLoving & Giving\u201d kicks in, a wistful, gorgeous look back at the love that\u2019s been lost. \u00a0\u201cIn Essence\u201d might have been a subliminal message for Messrs. Banks and Rutherford, feeling like a lost Peter Gabriel tune with abundant space in the arrangement, big vocals, gently galloping drums, subtle guitar accents and prominent flute. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis House\u201d is a darker, heavier concoction about displacement and dissolution (\u201cThis house doesn\u2019t feel like a home anymore\u201d) which also serves as a vocal showcase as the man at the mic veers into and out of falsetto, sometimes single-tracking, sometimes double- or triple-tracking his powerful voice. Then the upbeat strings featured on the four-minute opening section of \u201cJoely\u201d inevitably bring the Beatles to mind, even if the closing spoken-word section is a bit of a head-scratcher. <\/p>\n
Penultimate track \u201cFalling Down To Earth\u201d delivers a rather Tears For Fears feel with a pulsing bass behind Longdon as he songs about surrendering control and going with the flow; one suspects the reverb and precision of the vocal mix here are the work of Mr. Aubrey. Album closer \u201cOn To The Headland\u201d is a purely solo, acoustic-and-voice number that finds Longdon surrendering to the inevitability of all that\u2019s happened and letting go of any bitterness about it; he sings it magnificently.<\/p>\n
The second disc of this reissue features a live performance of much of Wild River<\/i>, plus a couple of Gifthorse tunes, with the same core band behind Longdon as on the studio recordings. These are all skillfully and enthusiastically delivered, further supplemented with an alternate extended version of \u201cOn To The Headland\u201d and the unreleased and notably proggy tune \u201cBeyond Belief.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with all English Electric releases, the packaging for the 2023 edition of Wild River<\/i> is beautiful and the liner notes quite thorough, if not entirely complete. Remarkably, the name of a man without whom this release more than likely would not exist\u2014Greg Spawton\u2014does not appear anywhere. Which feels like a final expression of friendship: here, this is yours, we did this for you, to celebrate your life.<\/p>\n
And while one might wish for a happier ending to this story, it\u2019s still one well worth knowing, about a prodigiously talented man fueled by determination and blessed with true love and true friends. Wild River <\/i>showcases David Longdon\u2019s tremendous talents as a songwriter, vocalist, player and arranger, and this beautifully remixed and repackaged new version puts a fresh shine on his first outing as the frontman he was born to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10791],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46780","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-david-longdon","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46780","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=46780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46780"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}