COMMON GROUND

Common Ground, the 13th studio record of UK-based ensemble Big Big Train, is an album of change. The band's line-up has been substantially renovated, with the departure of Dave Gregory (guitars), Danny Manners (keyboards) and Rachel Hall (strings and backing vocals). The core of the band on the new record is thus reduced to four members, David Longdon (vocals), Gregory Spawton (bass), Rikard Sjöblom (guitars, keyboards) and Nick D'Virgilio (drums). A large collective of musicians also features on the album, including Dave Foster (guitars), new members Carly Bryant (keyboards, vocals), Clare Lindley and Aidan O'Rourke (violin), and a five piece brass ensemble, allowing Big Big Train to experiment with a new palette of sounds and textures. Another element of change can be found in the themes of the nine songs of the album, which are more decidedly rooted in present days narratives (including a perspective on Covid-19), rather than tales of past events (though there are still a couple of tracks featuring the usual chronicles of days gone past).

Perhaps inevitably given its background, Common Ground feels somewhat like a transitional album, where the band are still trying to find their new footing. It does not have the magniloquence and coherence of Big Big Train's best opus, but it nevertheless shines on more than a couple of occasions, making it a worthwhile addition to any Big Big Train fan's collection. The strengths of the record are the usual combination of stellar musicianship and clever prog rock songwriting. This ensures that, in its best moments, the music is both splendidly accessible as well as complex and multi-layered, offering plenty of opportunities to dig deeper with repeated listens. There are so many layers and little hidden moments in the arrangements that I could spend hours mentally dissecting the twists and turns of prog epics like the explosive instrumental "Apollo" and the album's masterpiece "Atlantic Cable". Meanwhile, David Longdon's superb voice plays a big role in making the album run smoothly, even in its most complex episodes. His placid, mellifluous singing is absolutely endearing and his senseless, premature death that occurred only a few months after the release of this record, is an incommensurable loss not only for the band or the prog community, but for contemporary music altogether.

While Common Ground as a whole flows away smoothly and pleasantly, a more attentive listening reveals a tracklist that is slightly less coherent and homogeneous in quality than what Big Big Train have used us to with past albums. Next to exceptional episodes like "Apollo", "Atlantic Cable", the epic title-track "Common Ground" or the heartbreaking piano ballad "Endnotes", we find slightly subpar tracks that follow the usual songwriting formula but without the spark that one can find in the best Big Big Train's compositions. "The Strangest Times" is a light, poppy affair that is bogged down by lyrics that are slightly too prosaic for my taste (I cannot help but cringe everytime Longdon sings words like "lockdown", "social distance" and the "PM's 5pm address"). The D'Virgilio-penned track "All the Love We Can Give" feels somewhat too derivative with its references to the Beatles and the 1970s prog rock, and features low-tone vocals on the verses that sound slightly out of place. "Dandelion Clock" and the short instrumental "Headwaters" are both fairly anonymous, and so is the other mini-epic of the album, the 7-minute long "Black with Ink", that can only find a convincing melody in its mid-section and overall simply pales in comparison to "Atlantic Cable".

In summary, Common Ground is a good album, alternating a few moments of excellence with more average compositions that I would struggle to include among the band's best output. Big Big Train are one of the leading forces in contemporary progressive rock and I always expect them to astonish me with each new release. Common Ground did not do that. It's an OK album that only occasionally reminds us of why Big Big Train are held in such a high regard. It's still better than 80% of prog rock you can find in the stores today, but I cannot help but walk away slightly disappointed by this LP.