BIG BIG TRAIN

The Underfall Yard ENGLISH ELECTRIC

BBT’s pivotal 2009 masterpiece, remixed and remastered.

While promoting their acclaimed 2009 album The Underfall Yard, Big Big Train took a punt and gave away the monolithic, 23-minute title track free via their website. This counter-intuitive gambit paid off. Years later, with their fortunes flourishing, BBT polled their Facebook fans (affectionately dubbed ‘Passengers’), and learned that this generous/shrewd gesture had led to many thousands of sales of the parent album. In turn, that LP was the gateway to the band’s world for a large proportion of the receptive audience that followed them ever since. To this day that fan favourite still shifts units and remains their best-selling release to date.

At that time, the band were 19 years, six albums and three singers in. This was their first outing with their new find, frontman, flautist and multi-instrumentalist David Longdon. From the a cappella choral lines of opener Evening Star and into the cascading rounds of Master James Of St George, it was clear his seasoned vocals gave fresh depth and soul to bassist/ writer Greg Spawton’s ever more refined compositions. With Master James and defining gut-puncher Victorian Brickwork, Spawton took the trauma of his father’s recent death and couched it in textured, complex and listenable progressive rock. Drawing on grand heroics in the stirring Winchester Diver and the genius of Brunel in the title opus, Spawton was developing a unique way with historical English themes, setting the template for BBT’s distinctive musical identity.

So many sonic trademarks were coming together for the band at this point. Former member Andy Poole did much of the under-the-bonnet stuff on the original; on this remixed remaster BBT’s trusted engineer Rob Aubrey buffs to a new sheen a record that shone anyway. The work of (soon-to-be official) members Nick D’Virgilio and Dave Gregory gleams anew, as do the baleful, colliery band tones of Dave Desmond’s brass ensemble.

The extras here are three new recordings by the ‘classic’ BBT line-up, including now-former members Gregory, violinist Rachel Hall and keyboardist Danny Manners. With a shiny new brass prelude and updated guitar solo from guest Francis Dunnery, The Underfall Yard 2020 is a vibrant read that shows what a difference a decade, live experience and true chemistry can make. Songs From The Shoreline re-points Victorian Brickwork and reunites it with later EP track Fat Billy Shouts Mine, and the brand new Brew And Burgh is an elegantly simple, sentimental Spawton anthem about the fellowship found among the band, and their Passengers too. It’s a sweet coda to this, the definitive edition of a modern masterpiece.

THE DEFINITIVE EDITION OF A MODERN MASTERPIECE.