GRAND TOUR

There's quite a tradition in prog of dealing with Weighty Literary Themes: 'The Fountain of Salmacis' (based on Ovid's METAMORPHOSES), TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION (based on Edgar Allan Poe) and 'Xanadu' (based on Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan') spring to mind. Big Big Train do a splendid job here with the 14 min. 28 sec. 'Ariel', which neatly combines allusions to THE TEMPEST with references to the life and poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. It's the highlight of the album, and it's a predominantly vocal track.

I've got decidedly mixed feelings about the remainder of the album. 'Alive' and 'The Florentine' are okay I guess, the former consisting of 'power pop' with the addition of some neat little mellotron, and the latter featuring pleasant solos on violin, Moog and electric guitar. 'Theodora in Green and Gold' is good too: catchy and touching, but with a chord progression that's perhaps a little too similar to 'Judas Unrepentant'. The main problem lies with the album's other 'mini-epics'. The 13 min. 33 sec. 'Roman Stone' has no tune worth speaking of and features boring, cliché-like lyrics. ('All things must pass / Dawn down to dusk / All stories have an ending / The first and the last': if that's all you can say about the Roman Empire, just SHUT UP!) The piece almost comes alive in the middle, where there's a fast interlude for rhythm section, brass and flute, but it soon falls flat again. Similarly, the 14 min. 'Voyager' is far too wordy and the words mean little ('Out into the open skies / To find out what we are / How far we've come / How far we can go' - oh pleeease!), there's a pleasant instrumental section with a bubbly synth solo that reminds me of Genesis' 'Riding The Scree', but the thing-as-a-whole fails to capture the imagination. 'Homesong' initially feels pleasant enough, but its Grand Finale (with added brass ensemble and Dave Gregory's guitar wailing away, more or less like in 'East Coast Racer') seems overcooked and undeserved; in my opinion it merely grates.

It seems likely that GRAND TOUR was Big Big Train's reaction to Britain's 'Brexit' vote of June 2016. While the band's intentions may have been good ('Let's just show how Britain used to CONNECT with the rest of Europe'), the album flounders disastrously. Which is no surprise, really, for in the preceding ten years BBT had delivered four or five true masterpieces, and inspiration can't last forever...

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