THE UNDERFALL YARD

Big Big Train's The Underfall Yard is another landmark in their discography, because it's the first album where the fivesome of co-founders Greg Spawton and Andy Poole, drummer Nick D'Virgilio, the late great David Longdon, and guitarist Dave Gregory came together. D'Virgilio had guested on drums on some tracks on The Difference Machine, but this is where he became a full band member, but it's the fact that this is the first time we get that fivesome together which to me is the important thing: whilst more members would arrive and depart over time, those five would be at the heart of the lineup for every album from this one up to The Second Brightest Star, giving Big Big Train a level of stability they simply had never had as a project before.

Initially, I didn't get the appeal of this one. With a few Genesis-isms slipped in here and there (in particular, there's a pinch of Steve Hackett's classic "weeping guitar" sound present), the group I most immediately thought of on my first listens was Spock's Beard, particularly when it comes to the use of vocal harmonies. Maybe that's the problem - at that point Spock's Beard hadn't clicked with me, so I bounced off the album.

In addition, the lyrical themes evaded me somewhat, tending to focus on architecture and large-scale engineering feats, though in retrospect I've come to appreciate the angle here: the approach seems to be to tackle history not from a perspective of kings and nobles, but of artisans and workers, an alternate perspective I find more interesting.

Musically speaking, Gregory's guitar work is rather enchanting, D'Virgilio is a dab hand on the drums, Spawton and Poole keep up their multi-instrumentalist duties with aplomb, and David Langdon's vocals have grown on me a lot. You get the impression that he could do a full-on Peter Gabriel impression if he wanted, but he resists the temptation - showing admirable restraint given the number of prog vocalists who've steered in a Gabriel-esque direction. Instead, the voice is distinctly his own, but his capacity to be in tune with the emotional tone the song is going for and sell it - particularly well-showcased on Victorian Brickwork - is perhaps his best contribution.

By and large I'd say this is a pretty solid album, though the whole thing seems curiously muted - even sections which are supposed to be exciting and dynamic seem to be weighed down a little by somewhat leaden production at times, and the whole thing just seems to be a little bit off to me... it's clearly very competent, but it also feels very calculated, a direct stab at what the prog audience fancies rather than something more esoteric like The Difference Machine. I can't help but also think that in terms of much of the lyrical themes and aesthetic, Goodbye To the Age of Steam already did all this (and they rehash a lot of this in English Electric at that).

In short, this might verge on prog heresy - but I actually don't think I like Longdon-era Big Big Train. I can see why this got popular on the prog scene, but it also doesn't quite seem to be anything all that new in the grand scheme of things, and I think the band are actually more interesting for the stuff they did before the market decided it liked them after all.