WELCOME TO THE PLANET

When this album first appeared, its cover art filled me with trepidation. COMMON GROUND had looked bad enough, and now Big Big Train seemed to have gone the whole hog, using pure mid-1970s Jehovah's Witnesses ('The Watchtower') style.

As for the music... I still have mixed feelings about it. If anything, WELCOME TO THE PLANET reminds me of such latter-day Caravan albums as BETTER BY FAR, by which I mean: the band's most innovative soloists having flown the coop, there still is space for one or two haunting and quite a few inconsequential songs (in Caravan's case, I consider 'Nightmare' first-rate), and there may even be one or two instrumentals (once again, with Caravan I really appreciated 'The Last Unicorn').

So what have we here, exactly? 'Made from Sunshine' seems to be BBT's equivalent of Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't She Lovely', while 'The Connection Plan' sounds like angst-ridden, violin-driven, mid-seventies 10cc-style 'soft rock'. Matters improve with 'Lanterna', which is a charming ballad with splendid vocal harmonies, and with the touching 'Capitoline Venus', which mainly consists of acoustic 12-string, mellotron and David Longdon's lead vocal. 'A Room With No Ceiling' isn't bad either: a quirky, bass-driven instrumental which turns into a little march that reminds me of National Health. On 'Proper Jack Foster', Longdon's voice sound warmer and more soothing than I'd ever heard before - which makes it all the more sad that this was to be his last studio recording with the band. 'Bats in the Belfry' is a lively instrumental that somehow reminds me of the Who's 'Sparks' (a.k.a. 'Underture'). 'Oak and Stone' is yet another nostalgic ballad with lovely vocal harmonies and very lush mellotron - but then - my goodness what just happened? - Carly Bryant's title track is an out-and-out scary song (about childlessness, it seems); it ends the album on a deep sigh.

Taken all together, I'd say WELCOME TO THE PLANET is an O.K. product which can't hold a candle to earlier and far more ambitious BBT albums like ENGLISH ELECTRIC (parts 1 & 2) or FOLKLORE. One wonders what direction the band might have taken if only David Longdon (and perhaps Carly Bryant as well) had been available for future releases...

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