A Good Little Truth: BBT’s Wassail

On By bradbirzerIn progressive rock music6 Comments

Big Big Train, Wassail (English Electric, 2015)

Tracks: Wassail; Lost Rivers of London; Mudlarks; and Master James of St. George.

BBT Wassail
Wassail, the new EP from Big Big Train

As far as I know, I’ve never tasted Wassail.

Of course, I come from Bavarian peasant stock and possess, sadly, not a drop of Anglo-Saxon or Celtic blood in my veins.  My wife, however, is blessed with Celtic as well as Swedish ancestry, and I’m more than happy to have played a role in passing those genes on to our rather large gaggle of children.

As far back as I remember, though, my very German-American family drank something that sounds quite similar, at least in essence if not in accidents, to Wassail, Gluhwein.  Even the very word Gluhwein conjures not just the scents of warm cinnamon, cloves, and anise, but also the idea of heavenly comfort and satiation.

Much the same could be said of all of Big Big Train’s music.  Not that it doesn’t have its share of tensions and darker moments within the music, but, it’s hard to imagine a band in the world today that better understands the goods and beauties of this world than does Big Big Train.  They find glory in even the most ordinary of things.  And, rightly so.

A beautifully rendered cover, layered with symbolism equal to the music in every way.
A beautifully rendered cover, layered with symbolism equal to the music in every way.

Wassail is a triumph, frankly.  Not a huge triumph in the way The Underfall Yard or English Electric were each immense, almost overwhelming, triumphs, but a triumph, nonetheless.

A good, little truth.

In Greek, one would employ a word that has become utterly perverted over the last hundred years to describe Wassail best: a “dogma.”  Literally, translating it from Greek to Latin, a dogma means a “good little thing,” a thing good in and of itself whether we understand its relation to larger truths or not.

Such is Wassail.  A good little truth, whether we understand its relation to anything else or not.  Only four songs at 25 minutes and 39 seconds, Wassail ends all too quickly.  And, yet, for those nearly 26 mintues it plays, it fills our souls to the brim.

The opening song, “Wassail,” is a sing-songy English folk tune, completely with poetic and thoughtful lyrics.  Here is the apple—the symbol of the devil, the instrument that caused the Fall, and the fruit that, to this day, brings so much love and joy.  How can one thing be so loaded down by so many meanings—from the very existence of the universe and our relation in it, to the very thing that serves at the heart of what our grandmothers make best?  This is a Longdon song, pure and simple.  It is, for all intents and purposes, the sequel to Hedgerow, but without the rock edge.

The second song, “Lost Rivers of London,” is as much a Greg Spawton-song as the first was a Longdon song.  What remains of the ancient world under the very streets of the city that represents so much good and truth in this world?  What has nature wrought, our ancestors cultivated, and our current generation forgotten?  These are quintessential Spawton questions, and, of course, true to Gregorian form, he serves as our modern natural historian, our urban archeologist, and our prog bard.

The third song, “Mudlarks,” is also a Spawton song, but its fullness comes across as a Big Big Train song more than the song of any one person.  On “Mudlarks,” every member of the band, contributes and plays his or her heart out.  Of the four songs, this is the most pop-rock oriented, despite the use of a whole set of rather folksy strings.

The final song of the EP, “Master James of St. George,” reveals just how much the band has evolved since the song first appeared—rather gloriously—on The Underfall Yard.  Recorded live at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, this version of “Master James” is much more layered than the original.  Whereas the original offered a folksy minimalism, this version is layered almost beyond reason.  The new strings add much but what really comes to the fore in this version is Danny Manner’s keyboards.

Big Big Train in Real World Studios.
Big Big Train in Real World Studios.

The Wassail version of “Master James” in no way makes the original obsolete.  Quite the opposite.  This new version just makes those of us who love BBT justifiably a little prouder of them.  For, really, this version shows just how truly alive their music is, how much depth it possesses, and long it will be remembered. . . long after any of us have vanished from this world.

Let us just hope when we get there (wherever “there” is), we know which apple to choose.  It’s pretty clear that BBT wishes us well, and they’ve even kindly provided the soundtrack for that journey.

“The words are stones in my mouth”: Katatonia’s Sanctitude

On By Craig BreadenIn progressive rock music2 Comments

A beautifully-conceived live album and concert video, Sanctitude (Kscope) finds Katatonia going mostly acoustic in a well-curated exhibition of songs sympathetic to the quieter spaces.  Yes, there are candles, and yes, they play in a church, but this is not an overwrought episode of MTV Unplugged; rather it’s an essential expression for Katatonia and its songs, an approach they explored at length on their Dethroned and Uncrowned album, where they offered the entirety of Dead End Kings in similar stripped down fashion.  Sanctitude is a complement to last year’s Last Fair Day Gone Night; where that live set, issued on CD/DVD last year, offered a rocked-out, straightforward career retrospective, the new album demonstrates why Katatonia is Katatonia.  Because they’re a death metal, no a black metal, no a doom metal, no a shoe-gazey rock band — or are they? — that has the chops and the artistic will to deliver an environment rather than a category, to see the value in reinterpreting their own work.  I find this fascinating because so often rock and the subgenres associated with it forget about personal context and mood, depending heavily on delivering the album as recorded, to keep the adoring fans adoring.  Vocalist Jonas Renkse and guitarist Anders Nystrom, the persistent heart of the band, have consistently created terrain for their music that didn’t exist before.  It can have hooks and riffs, but texture and, importantly, a dependence on the sounds words make, rule the day.  Classic goth is a touchstone, along with the dynamics of Nirvanaesque grunge, and I also find myself thinking Disintegration-era Cure is seated deep in Katatonia’s grooves.  Sanctitude throws into relief the band’s reach for such delicate shading — an element that’s been in their music at least since Discouraged Ones (1998) — allowing luminance into the screen of permanent twilight their mood and lyrics often inhabit.  In the film of the show, they put Union Chapel in London to great use.  It highlights the importance of space in Katatonia’s music, and adds intimate warmth rather than gothic solemnity to the concert.  The band — this iteration including the Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord, bassist Niklas Sandin, and percussionist JP Asplund — and the crowd are clearly having a good time.  The performances are solid, generally relaxed despite an admitted nervousness and a new band, and Jonas’s lead guitar lines, the only overt nod to electricity outside some subtle keyboarding, are a kind of revelation, their snaky simplicity conjuring the same spirits Opeth raised on Damnation.  The highpoints are many, from the opener “In the White,” from the Great Cold Distance, to the finale, “The One You are Looking for is Not Here,” a duet with Silje Wergeland that originally appeared on Dead End Kings.  In between the band covers fifteen other songs, from Viva Emptiness (“One Year from Now” really killing it with a slide guitar, tarantella figure, and bluesy vocal break), Brave Murder Day, and Last Fair Deal Gone Down.  Because the songs are so weighted with the sonic emotion Jonas brings to his vocal approach and Anders to his playing, the edge of the songs is never lost; as Katatonia has long demonstrated, heavy music is much more than volume fraying to distortion.

Whereas the documentary accompanying Last Fair Day Gone Night is a fantastic oral history of the band, Sanctitude’s doc is a detailed analysis of this particular tour and the state of the band at present, very simply presented, with Jonas and Anders answering questions that avoid what you might expect:  these aren’t simply softballs, but address aesthetic decisions and processes, band and artistic partnerships that have disintegrated, fan-base issues and future possibilities for the 25-year-old Katatonia.  As rock documentary Katatonia’s films work because of their thoroughness, and provide portraits of not only the band but of Swedish metal over the past quarter-century, its vernacular.  DVD bonus packages aren’t always a bonus, but Katatonia delivers, and a lot of bands would do well to speak so honestly and openly of their music in this context.

Along with Swedish peers Opeth and northern neighbors Gazpacho, Katatonia is creating a body of work that suggests their influence will be long felt, with a music that feels organic and electric, identifiable and unique, personal and expansive.  Who wouldn’t want to see what happens next?

Big Big Train – Wassail – EP Review

On By Time LordIn progressive rock music1 Comment

The Man of Much Metal recognizes the excellence of BBT’s newest work:

If the quality of music on ‘Wassail’ is anything to go by, ‘Folklore’ could be a very special album indeed and, whilst I don’t like to make wild predictions or jump to conclusions, we might just be looking at Big Big Train’s best yet. At the very least, I expect the octet to further cement their place within the upper echelons of the progressive rock world, and rightly so. I’m so glad I have Big Big Train in my life. Consider me one very excited and impatient chap.

Prog from the Pampas?

On By Jay WatsonIn progressive rock music5 Comments

POSEIDOTICA: El Dilema del Origen

May 2015 Aquatalan Records

Free Listening at: https://poseidotica.bandcamp.com/album/el-dilema-del-origen

El Dilema del Origen

Walter Broide Drums & Percussion

Hernan Miceli: Guitar

Martin Rodriguez: Bass

Santiago Rua: Guitar

With temerity I venture with this post a bit outside the usual norm of classic, neo, and 3rd wave prog. But even as creative pop (Tears for Fears) and space psychedelia (Hawkwind) intersects on the great prog Venn diagram at times, so can some Post-Rock/Metal.

POSEIDOTICA is a four man band from Buenos Aires, Argentina and this is my first encounter with their music which they call “Rock Expansivo.” Prog Archives calls them “Heavy Prog.” They’ve been around since at least 2005 with this album, El Dilema del Origen being their fourth. It’s an 11-track affair which caught my attention by the fairly “proggy” album jacket art. It is a fine spacey affair which reminds me of Jim Starlin’s art when he was doing Warlock for Marvel back in the day (Thanos anyone?)

Though the album’s title makes me think of an early Church theologian and his own dilemma with heresy, the literal translation is “The Dilemma of Origin.” This music is what I’d refer to as post rock/post metal with prog overtones. And as much as I like doing track by track reviews, this album even with 11 tracks is not so much individual songs as an interweaving soundscape. While not rising quite to the levels of American titans ISIS and PELICAN, this is well produced shoe-gazer music that paints mood and atmosphere in a lush template of melody and power. If you like GREEN CARNATION or THE SIX PARTS SEVEN (and you should) you’ll like this disc. Yes there tends to be a sameness to much post rock/metal with the ebb & flow of loud & quiet, but that doesn’t take away from POSEIDOTICA’s clean superb musicianship or this album’s harmonic beauty. All of the tunes are instrumental and flow nicely from one to the next. The band, for the most part, not only integrates tempo and sound in each individual track but also from song to song so as to militate against monotony. From music that sounds at times almost like a science fiction score (track 1) to surging hard rocking metal (Vikings and Cowboys in space; track 4) it’s a little bit of surf reverb meets post rock meets DEEP PURPLE (track 9) sans Hammond.   As my favorite all-time Band is CAMEL and their magnum opus The Snow Goose, this kind of cinematic and anthemic instrumental fare is evocative and perfect for background listening. The acoustic guitar pieces as well as the shredding and riffing are ably complemented by stirring drumming by Walter Broide.

So, if you’re looking for a breather to cleanse the palate from the best of the best (GLASS HAMMER, THE TANGENT, BIG BIG TRAIN or MARILLION) this album deserves a listen…and re-listens. I like it and will try to put in on my shelf. No, there’s nothing really new here but at around 45 minutes it does not wear out its competent and well-crafted welcome.

Is it prog? Well, close enough for my taste especially in the near Floydian vibes from track 3, Hologram.

Band web-site: http://www.poseidotica.com.ar (non-English)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/POSEIDOTICA?fref=ts