Music

The Overshadowed Child of Big Big Train

I freely admit that I am an Anglophile. When I was 13, my father took a one-semester sabbatical from Vanderbilt University – where he was a materials science professor – to do research at Cambridge University. He loved to tell me how he worked in the same lab where J. J. Thomson discovered electrons. Our family lived in a house in Cambridge, and I went to school at Comberton Village College. The few months we were there were some of the happiest of my life.

I don’t know how we first learned about brass rubbing, but we quickly adopted it as our family hobby while we lived in England. Brasses are engraved plates of brass that were placed over tombs in English churches. They were popular from the 1200’s until Victorian times, and they were often quite ornate representations of the person they commemorated. Many are over six feet long and portray knight crusaders. Others are more modest in size, and they might represent prosperous merchants or accomplished academics.

Brass rubbing is the same as putting a penny under a piece of paper and rubbing it with a crayon. As you rub, all the details of the penny emerge onto the paper. With a medieval brass, it’s same principle, just on a much larger scale.

My family had a book that catalogued all of the brasses in Europe and Great Britain. Every week, we would locate a promising brass somewhere within driving distance and spend a Saturday afternoon making rubbings of it. Some small country churches had many beautiful examples, hidden under old rugs in the aisles, or atop sarcophagi in side chapels.

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but our family hobby ended up being a marvelous way of visiting out-of-the-way villages all over East Anglia. We even got fairly proficient at spotting churches that were likely to contain hidden brass treasures. While we worked, the local vicar would often stop by to chat with us and share the history of the church and the person under the brass. To my 13-year-old eyes and ears, these impossibly old churches and the persons buried in them came to life, and I grew to love British culture and history.

A brass rubbing of Sir Roger de Trumpington, 1289

Which is a convoluted way of explaining why I also love Big Big Train, possibly the most “British” group working today. In song after song, they sing of forgotten heroes and heroines, everyday Britons who labored without complaint to make their communities safe and prosperous. As an American, I don’t understand all of the references in their lyrics, but, God bless ‘em, their albums contain enough notes for me to get the gist of what they are trying to convey.

One of Big Big Train’s albums that is most grounded in English life is English Electric Part One. (Even the title is a reference that is easily missed by a non-Britisher. English Electric manufactured diesel engines for trains.) It is also one of the strongest set of songs they ever recorded.

Released in September of 2012, it came two years after BBT’s Far Skies, Deep Time EP, and three years after The Underfall Yard. So BBT fans were eager to hear new music from them, and English Electric did not disappoint. From the energetic opener The First Rebreather to the immensely satisfying closer Hedgerow, there is not a weak track on this perfectly sequenced album. Even the cover art, featuring Matt Sefton’s close up photos of rusted and worn metal surfaces, contributes to the sense of past glories and forgotten men and women.

The Underfall Yard was the first album that featured vocalist/flutist David Longdon, and with English Electric Part One, he is a fully integrated member of the group. Drummer Nick D’Virgilio is also officially on board, so the original core trio of Greg Spawton, Dave Gregory, and Andy Poole is now a quintet.

The First Rebreather is a tale of diver Alexander Lambert, who, in 1880, used an experimental “rebreather” (like today’s scuba equipment) to rescue some workmen who were trapped in an underground tunnel. While they were digging the tunnel, they struck a spring which quickly flooded their exit. Lambert used the rebreather to swim 1000 feet in total darkness to reach the trapped workers. Greg Spawton brilliantly imagines Lambert as a “mummer” (a British folk actor who brings dead characters to life). The guitar-driven melody features a beautiful string interlude composed by Dave Gregory. The musical tension builds inexorably until it is blessedly released with the spring water bursting out to the words “Here she comes/the sleeper wakes/ten thousand years/she lay in wait for this.”

After the intense drama of The First Rebreather, we need a little relief, and Longdon’s Uncle Jack is the perfect song for that. It starts with a down-home banjo riff that is soon augmented with fiddle, keyboards, double bass, and melodica. It features one of the most infectious melodies BBT has ever recorded, particularly when Lily and Violet Adams chime in on background vocals to sing, “Rose Hips/Haw Berries/Hedgerow/Dry Stone/Dog Rose/Honeysuckle/Blackbirds/Red Wing” – all inconspicuous and mundane sights of an outdoor stroll, but to Longdon’s coal miner Uncle Jack they are magical elements that cannot be taken for granted. Spending hours toiling underground makes any time in the sun outdoors infinitely precious.

Spawton’s Winchester From St. Giles’ Hill is a beautiful ode to the historic town of Winchester. Its heritage goes back to ancient times of chalkhills and Alfred. Danny Manners’ piano and Longdon’s flute combine for an exquisite duet on this celebration of a quintessentially British town.

Judas Unrepentent is a tribute to Tom Keating, a frustrated artist who turned to painting forgeries of masters’ works to undermine the art establishment. He left clues in all his works, and he was eventually found out. He has since passed away, but he has the last laugh, as his art now fetches high prices. “So now we can all buy/Real genuine fakes/That’s posthumous fame/It’s always the same”. Another Longdon composition, this track features an insistent rhythmic base supporting an irresistible melodic hook and cascading vocal harmonies. It is one of the most enjoyable songs in BBT’s entire catalog.

Summoned By Bells is a gentle celebration of Spawton’s mother’s hometown of Leicester. Spawton’s lyrics describe the nostalgia and disorientation one feels when returning to a place of one’s childhood after it has changed and evolved: “A stone’s throw from the line/some of the old places survive/ a golden thread in time.” Once again, Danny Manners’ piano playing is masterful, and a musical theme emerges that will be heard again in the finale, Hedgerow.

Upton Heath is a Spawton/Longdon collaboration, and it draws on the strengths of both songwriters. The melody conveys a yearning that cannot be put into words, yet the lyrics complement it perfectly. Ethereal voices sing, “And all that we are/And all that we shall be/Walk with me/Up on Upton Heath” and transform the simple activity of strolling through the countryside into a sacramental act. The instrumentation is all acoustic – this is timeless folk music, and like the best folk music, it manages to evoke contradictory emotions. Listening to it makes me melancholy and joyful at the same time. It is a masterpiece, plain and simple.

From the heavenly heights of Upton Heath, we are brought down to earth with a crash by the harrowing A Boy In Darkness. This song begins with a clear-eyed depiction of the horrors of child labor in 19th century British coal mines and fast forwards to the suffering of abused children in our supposedly more enlightened times. It is a fearless and unflinching song, performed with sensitivity. It doesn’t preach; it just makes its case. You have to have a heart of stone to not say a prayer for the young innocents who suffer after hearing this song.

English Electric Part One finishes with another masterpiece, the Longdon/Poole/Spawton composed Hedgerow. An ebullient guitar riff kicks it off, and before you know it, we’re off on another jaunt outdoors with Uncle Jack. Musical and lyrical motifs from Uncle Jack, Summoned By Bells, and Upton Heath pop up, tying together the entire album into a satisfying whole. It is the perfect conclusion to a song cycle that celebrates all that is good (and weeps for some that is bad) in England.

I titled this reflection on English Electric Part One The Overshadowed Child Of Big Big Train, because one year later they released English Electric Part Two, and a few months after that they combined both (with a few extra tracks) into English Electric: Full Power. Full Power is a gorgeous two-disc package with a huge full-color booklet featuring explanatory notes on every song, brief bios of all the contributors, and beautiful photos. It makes sense to plunk down the money for the two-disc set, right?

Well, yes, but I also want to make the case for English Electric Part One as a major work that deserves its own place in the BBT pantheon. As I stated at the beginning of this essay, it is a perfectly sequenced album, moving effortlessly from peak to musical peak. Spawton and Longdon both subsume their individual songwriting styles to serve the needs of the group, and as a result come up with some of their finest efforts ever. There is quite a large supporting cast of musicians (including future official members Danny Manners and Rachel Hall), but every song sounds intimate, like someone tapping you on the shoulder and asking, “Can I share with you a story about this place you might find interesting?”

In these times of streaming music, you can create endless playlists of your favorite songs of your favorite artists, but back in 2012, Big Big Train released an album that they obviously lavished great care on. Do them a favor and listen to it as they originally intended. Uncle Jack would appreciate it.

Republic of Letters

Christopher Dawson and Johannine Divine Madness

March 29, 2007

[Thanks to Phillip Carl Smith, the Orestes Brownson Council, and ISI for the invitation to speak at Notre Dame; it’s always a great pleasure to be here at Our Lady’s University; as was mentioned in my bio—I lived in Zahm for three years back when Fathers Tom King and Bill Miscamble were the rectors.  This past August, my wife, family, and I came over to the college for a day of research.  It happened to coincide with the arrival of the students.  As we pulled into the visitor parking lot by the library, my wife noticed a sign for Farley parking.  It said, “Farley, protecting its residents from Zahm since 1973.”  My wife hasn’t let me forget this.

I also want to thank Kevin Cawley, an amazing archivist over at the ND archives]

To put it simply (and perhaps a bit “simplistically”—but I prefer to think of it as “with fervor”), Dawson was one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, certainly one of its greatest men of letters, and perhaps one of the most respected Catholic scholars in the English speaking world.

“For Dawson is more like a movement than a man,” his publisher and friend, Frank Sheed, wrote of him in 1938. “His influence with the non-Catholic world is of a kind that no modern Catholic has yet had, both for the great number of fields in which it is felt and for the intellectual quality of those who feel it.”[1]  

Additionally, prominent American Catholic colleges began teaching courses on the thought of Christopher Dawson and other figures of the Catholic literary revival as early as the mid-1930s.[2]  

In 1933, the American Catholic journal Commonweal stated that “the writings of Christopher Dawson demand the thoughtful attention of all educated men.”[3]  

Six years later, the Jesuit journal, The Month, claimed that to “commend Mr. Dawson’s work is unnecessary; nothing that he writes could be unimportant.”[4]  In 1949, Waldemar Gurian, a refugee from the Nazis and a professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote, Dawson’s “very ability to make brilliant understatements and to display without pride, as something self-evident, his extraordinary broad knowledge make his synthesis particularly impressive.”[5]  

In 1950, the English Dominican journal, Blackfriars, claimed “that Mr. Dawson is an educator; perhaps the greatest that Heaven has sent us English Catholics since Newman.”[6]

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Republic of Letters

Russell Kirk’s Beauty and Civilization ~ The Imaginative Conservative

We built only for the moment, not even for the future, as we eradicated the past.

The loss of manners, he especially decried, had coincided, necessarily, with the loss of beauty in society. Nowhere, it seemed, did anyone take decorum seriously—whether in one’s soul or one’s society. If order in one’s soul leads to order in the commonwealth, disorder in one’s soul leads to the disorder in the commonwealth. The totalitarians of the present age, Kirk feared, wanted to control not only the present, but also the past and the future as well. “The totalists say that the old order is a corpse, and that man and society must be fashioned afresh, in grim fashion, upon a grim plan,” he wrote.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/01/russell-kirk-beauty-civilization-bradley-birzer.html

Republic of Letters

The Gray Eminence of Christopher Dawson

Without going deeply into Dawson’s thought—or any aspect of it—in this post, it is worthwhile cataloguing how many of his contemporaries claimed him important and his scholarship and ideas for their own.  This means, consequently, that while most Americans—Catholic or otherwise—no longer remember Christopher Dawson, they do often remember affectionately those he profoundly (one might even state indelibly) influenced.  The list includes well known personalities such as T.S. Eliot, Thomas Merton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis.  

In the world of humane learning and scholarship in the twentieth century, Dawson was a sort of John Coltrane.  Just as few non musicians listen to Coltrane, but EVERY serious musician does, the same was essentially true of Dawson.  And, yet, as with Coltrane, Dawson did enjoy long periods of widespread popularity and support in his own lifetime.

“For Dawson is more like a movement than a man,” his publisher and friend, Frank Sheed, wrote of him in 1938. “His influence with the non-Catholic world is of a kind that no modern Catholic has yet had, both for the great number of fields in which it is felt and for the intellectual quality of those who feel it.”[1]  As evidence, Sheed could cite much.  By the early 1930s, while Dawson was still in his early 40s,  American Catholic colleges began teaching courses on his thought, tying him to the larger Catholic literary movement of the day.[2]  In 1933, the American Catholic journal Commonweal stated that “the writings of Christopher Dawson demand the thoughtful attention of all educated men.”[3]  Six years later, the Jesuit journal, The Month, claimed that to “commend Mr. Dawson’s work is unnecessary; nothing that he writes could be unimportant.”[4]  In 1949, Waldemar Gurian, a refugee from the Nazis and a professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote, Dawson’s “very ability to make brilliant understatements and to display without pride, as something self-evident, his extraordinary broad knowledge make his synthesis particularly impressive.”[5]  In 1950, the English Dominican journal, Blackfriars, claimed “that Mr. Dawson is an educator; perhaps the greatest that Heaven has sent us English Catholics since Newman.”[6]

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Republic of Letters

Getting to Know Russell Kirk (2015)

At the beginning of his Histories, Herodotus notes that a normal person enjoys 26,250 days in his or her life, no day ever exactly like another.  I’m not quite sure I want to count how many days I have left, assuming I could even know such a thing. It’s certainly very wise of the Good Lord not to let us know such things.

Still, as I think about my own days, some wisely spent, others squandered, I have only a few serious regrets.

One of my two most important—at least as it hovers over my being—is that I never actually met Dr. Russell Amos Augustine Kirk in person.  I had the opportunity several times, but I never took advantage of these.  There are lots of reasons why this happened (or, as the case really was, failed to happen), but they really all came down to the same thing—I took too much for granted while in my 20s.  I seemed invulnerable as did those I loved and admired.  As one of my other heroes, Neil Peart, once wrote, “We’re only immortal for a very short time.”  My immortality seemed rather assured as did that of those whom I respected.  Strange considering my own father died when I was only two months old.  Yet, that happened before I was conscious of the world, and the whole story of his death had much more mythical significance than real influence.

Life has a funny way of teaching us each the lessons we so painfully need to learn, and I was rather shocked in the summer of 1994 when I heard that Russell Kirk had passed away.  I was only 26, but I knew I had missed my chance to meet the great man, a man I had studied intensely for about six years at that point.  

My own upbringing in a Goldwater household was rather ecumenical, at least toward things of imagination and what might generally be called of or on “the right.”  I never had a leftist/liberal phase, as liberals, right or wrong, always struck me as somewhat totalitarian in views as well as personality.  As a child and young man encouraged by my mom, I read everything I could get my hands on, and Kirk was just as important in the big scheme of things as, say, Hayek was.  I wasn’t desirous of being only an Austrian or only a paleo or a libertarian or whatever the divisions were in those days.  I just wanted to read everything that seemed interesting.

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Republic of Letters

New Pure Reason Revolution Coming

Pure Reason Revolution reunite; sign to InsideOutMusic for release of first new studio album in nearly 10 years
Jon Courtney & Chloë Alper have reunited the much-loved Pure Reason Revolution, playing their first show in close to 8 years at the recent Midsummer Prog Festival in the Netherlands, and performing their debut album ‘The Dark Third’ in full. They comment: “The festival & crowd reaction was incredible. We were touched that people had travelled from Canada, Russia, Italy, Spain, UK & many more countries. The tracks are exciting as ever to play & it’s encouraging to see the material still has relevance & connects.”   
 
The band have also revealed they are working on a brand new studio album, and have signed to InsideOutMusic for its release in 2020. Jon Courtney comments: “We’re currently working on material for the new album which returns to a more progressive sound & it’s nice to remind ourselves of the genesis of PRR” while Chloë adds: “it’s sounding spectacular.”
 
Pure Reason Revolution originally parted ways in November 2011, following touring in support of their 2010 album Hammer & Anvil. Since then, Jon Courtney started Bullet Height and released their debut album ‘No Atonement’ in 2017, while Chloë Alper began a new band called Tiny Giant as well as playing live with the likes of Charli XCX & James.
 
The band originally formed back in 2003, releasing their much-loved debut album ‘The Dark Third’ in 2006 via Sony BMG. They went on to release the albums ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ in 2009 & ‘Hammer & Anvil’ in 2010.
 
Look out for more information on the bands forthcoming new album.
 
PURE REASON REVOLUTION online:
https://www.facebook.com/purereasonrevolution/
https://twitter.com/prr_official
https://www.instagram.com/purereasonrevolution_official/
 
SUPERBALL MUSIC online:
www.superballmusic.com
www.facebook.com/superballmusic
www.twitter.com/superball_music
www.instragram.com/superball_music
Republic of Letters

Like THE BARDIC DEPTHS on Facebook

Dear friends, 

I get really, really tired of being asked to “like” Facebook pages. 

Being on the other end of it, though, makes me far more tolerant of such things. 

So, if you’re so inclined, please like our page “The Bardic Depths”–dedicated to our album coming out from Gravity Dream on March 20, 2020. 

Your “like” helps us know what the atmosphere in FB-land is like, and it’s also, admittedly, good for the ego! (You thought I was devoid of such base things, didn’t you!)

I’m only the lyrics guy, but I’ve had the chance to listen to the completed album (music written by a sheer genius, Dave Bandanna, with engineering and production by another genius, Robin Armstrong) three times now, and I’m rather blown away by the quality and purposefulness of the album. Dave is an extraordinary composer, and Robin, at least as I see it, is one of the two best audiophiles (the other being Rob Aubrey, with Steven Wilson being a close third) in the music business.

It’s a little weird–and also indescribably cool–to hear my words being put to music. But it’s also a dream come true. The story revolves around the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and their attempt to create coherent and meaningful mythologies for the 20th century.

Additionally, Dave has attracted some of the single best musicians out there. Several of the guitar and sax solos just make me weep.

Here’s the lineup:
Kevin McCormick – Guitars
Paolo Limoli – Keyboards, Piano
Tim Gehrt – Drums
Gareth Cole – Guitars
Peter Jones – Saxophone, vocals, spoken word
John William Francis – Marimba, spoken word
Glenn Codere – Backing Vocals
Mike Warren- Cello
Dave Bandana – Vocals, Keyboards, Guitars, Bass, Flute, Harmonica,
Robin Armstrong – Keyboards, Guitars, Bass, Drum programming, backing vocals

Extremely impressive. Again, I’m just the “words” guy! But, I love it all.

One side note about the musical lineup–I met Kevin McCormick back in September and October 1986. We traveled throughout Europe (and England) together, we listened to Talk Talk’s SPIRIT OF EDEN (and were gobsmacked by it) together in the fall of 1988, and we now proudly serve as the godfather to each other’s children. We’ve been prog buddies for over three decades. Crazily, we even knocked on Sting’s door in London in the spring of 1988. Thank God no one answered! When we got back to America after that, we roomed together. Ah, college.

Anyway, if you’re so willing, please like our page. Lots and lots of us will greatly appreciate it if you do.

Yours, Brad

https://www.facebook.com/Thebardicdepths/?hc_location=ufi

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