It’s now been over 20 years since the sad passing of Stuart Adamson, but for over half that period his erstwhile bandmates Bruce Watson and Mark Brzezicki have been ensuring that his Big Country legacy stays alive with a touring version of the band. Though the Assembly Hall was far from full on this London date of the tour, there is still a healthy quotient of diehard fans happy to relive those days.

Opener ‘1000 Stars’ showcased the close, intricate guitar interplay of Bruce Watson and son Jamie that has been finely honed for several years now, before the jaunty, fleet footed melodies of their biggest hit ‘Look Away’ had a good number of people shuffling their feet and punching the air to the chorus.

However the reaction to ‘Harvest Home’ demonstrated that it is debut album ‘The Crossing’ that holds the closest place in BC fans’ hearts and Bruce got a huge cheer when, after paying tribute to earliest members the Wishart brothers, he mentioned next year they would be marking its 40^th anniversary by playing the album in its entirety. By my reckoning that will be the third time they have done that since reforming, but this time we just got a pair of favourites in ‘Lost Patrol’ and ‘The Storm’.

Interestingly Bruce acts very much as the frontman, his unpredictable and caustic wit deployed on targets ranging from his son to the man in the George Thorigood T-shirt who he persuaded to do a swap for a Big Country shirt. In doing so he relieves that burden from singer, platinum-haired Englishman Simon Hough, who does a good job with a voice which while not an exact replication has some of the intonations of Stuart Adamson’s.

We then got a trinity of songs in succession from second album ‘Steeltown’ in ‘Just A Shadow’, my favourite BC song, the slow burning title track and ‘Where the Rose is Sown’. On each the guitar work was a little more conventionally rocking and less overly celtic than the debut album material, but truly superb.

They were also reminders of the socially conscious writing of Stuart Adamson, the first two accounts of the human cost to lives and communities of the destruction of heavy industry, the third an anti-war song from a soldier’s perspective that had fresh relevance in the light of the atrocities being committed in Ukraine.

I sensed mine and others attention wandering during the ballad ‘Ships’, rescued by the sweetest of solos from Bruce while ‘I’m Not Ashamed’ passed with barely any audience engagement, an illustration of how both their fanbase and identity waned in the nineties, though it was a timely reminder they continued to write good songs.

However, it was the quartet of big hits from 83/84 that everyone had been waiting for, beginning with the stately ‘Chance’ with the crowd chanting the chorus at several strategic points during the song, followed by the eponymous ‘In A Big Country’ as a group of fifty something blokes steamed forward, pogoing to those memorable celtic guitar riffs and reliving a younger time.

After Bruce’s incantation to get funky, ‘Wonderland’, after which this tour was named, kept the pot boiling but that was just a taster for the pit to get even more good naturedly raucous during ‘Fields Of Fire’.

Your correspondent could resist no longer and dived into the thick of the action, but a beer stained floor was slippier that the test skidpan at Silverstone and, after a couple of bodies went flying, by the time of a mid-section bridge which also included a snatch of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ I decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

After such a burst of excitement the sole encore (in a somewhat short set of an hour and 25 minutes) was always going to be an anticlimax, and doubly so as it was the obscure movie soundtrack and B-side ‘Restless Natives’, though again Bruce’s solo was excellent, and it was one of the songs where Simon seemed most comfortable.

Bruce said that the band would continue for as long as people wanted to hear their work. They may fall into the heritage act category these days, but what a back catalogue to be able to wheel out.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)