Release date: April 28, 2017
Label: Giant Electric Pea
Big Big Train 

Grimspound hits harder than previous Big Big Train albums, with more rocking guitar tones — and interplay between the two guitar players, Dave Gregory and Rikard Sjöblom — and more propulsive piano and keyboard work from Danny Manners.

Gentle songs and passages benefit from the new prominence of Rachel Hall’s violin, viola and cello. Hall’s instruments are sometimes cast as string quartet sections, and other times as melodic lines. Hall appears occasionally as the featured soloist, sometimes with fiery results. In “Experimental Gentlemen” (3:10 to 3:20) she adds a rhythmic push between the first and second half of the verse.

Rachel Hall adds additional colors to Grimspound with her lead vocal lines as well as her background vocals. On “The Ivy Gate” a melancholy Celtic acoustic beginning gives way to a rocking mid-section featuring Greg Spawton’s bass solo, illustrating the diversity of style and tone that Big Big Train brings together on this project.

Combined with the strongest composing to-date, these varied musical strengths make Grimspound the most musical and compelling of Big Big Train’s albums. The band’s enormous amount of attention to detail pays off in the emotional cohesion of the songs,  drawing the listener into a fascinating little world of rhythmic and melodic interplay. The experience becomes cinematic when you read the artfully-designed liner notes. Big Big Train gives you 20 pages of notes and artwork, including the lyrics and the stories behind how the songs came to be written. The net effect is to increase your understanding and involvement so that the music and it’s meaning create an event that spans the entire length of the 70-minute album.

This cinema of music, sound and meaning has it’s dramatic moments, as in the story of a WW I flying ace in “Brave Captain”. There is a dramatic and programmatic element in the instrumental development section. The keyboard plays a low-register line mimicking the low throaty sound of an airplane engine turning over. Just one element of many that involves the listener in the narrative of the music as the song unfolds.

Other stand-out moments on this album include a lovely bucolic interlude ‘with artists dreamers and thinkers’ on “Meadowland”:

A jazz-tinged feat of time travel to a bronze age settlement on the title track “Grimspound”:

There is a rousing winter round table where the best of the Enlightenment and Romanticism meet in “A Mead Hall in Winter”. The title was taken from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. One of the most famous passages in the book compares life to the brief flight of a bird through a feasting hall. All outside is cold, wintery and unknown, all inside is light and warmth. In the song the mead hall becomes a metaphor for an enlightened place where people can gather and speak freely of the things that matter to them; knowledge, freedom of thought and speech, science, poetry, art music and love. All of these can be found in the mead hall created by Greg Spawton’s lyrics:

This album abounds in melodies that draw you in, and the tones, tonalities and musical motifs that link the songs’ subjects catch your ear many times over with their subtle variations and development.

Founding member of Big Big Train Greg Spawton (composer, electric bass) said, prior to its release, that the band would be “letting their hair down a little bit” on this album. Letting their hair down has brought out more facets of the band’s strength and creativity. Grimspound  rocks more on occasion, includes more folk, Celtic and jazz influences, and the decision not to use horns allows the core band to develop rhythmic and melodic motifs that transition from song to song throughout the album.

The Grimspound album represents Big Big Train’s strongest combination of composing, playing, arranging and thematic development. The sequencing  pulls the listener onward through the entire eight pieces, much as The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album once did. As a whole, this is the band’s most musical effort yet, and their most emotionally engaging work start to finish.

Grimspound
Big Big Train

Released on April 28th, 2017
English Electric Recordings (UK)

TRACK LISTING

1. Brave Captain (12:37)
2. On The Racing Line (5:11)
3. Experimental Gentlemen (10:01)
4. Meadowland (3:36)
5. Grimspound (6:55)
6. The Ivy Gate (7:26)
7. A Mead Hall In Winter (15:19)
8. As The Crow Flies (6:43)

Total Time – 67:48
Discography

BIG BIG TRAIN
Nick D’Virgilio – Drums & Percussion, Backing Vocals
Danny Manners – Keyboards, Double Bass
Rikard Sjöblom – Guitars, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Rachel Hall – Violin, Viola, Cello, Backing Vocals
Greg Spawton – Bass Guitar, Bass Pedals, Backing Vocals on The Second Brightest Star
David Longdon – Vocals, Flute, Piano, Guitars, Synths, Percussion
Mandolin, Banjo, Lute, Melodica, Celesta on The Second Brightest Star
Dave Gregory – Guitars
Andy Poole – Acoustic Guitars, Keyboards, Backing Vocals

With:

Judy Dyble – Vocals (“The Ivy Gate”)
Philip Trzebiatowski – Cello ( “On The Racing Line”)

Dr. Steven Blomerth