Niels' Top 10 Albums of 2017 - Number 1

1. Big Big Train – Grimspound

It's an oft-repeated mantra: Progressive rock music had its golden age in the 1970's. You and I know better: this is a myth. It is, officially, no longer true. The golden age is now, and if you don't believe me, listen to Grimspound. Other than nostalgia, a fickle mistress at the best of times, there is no reason an album like this cannot stand comfortably side-by-side with the very best works of the classic era.

Back in 2012, the first English Electric album left me utterly awestruck. Big Big Train was officially the Best Best Thing since Sliced Sliced Bread. Since then, however, it was hard to get that worked up about Big Big Train again. When last year's Folklore failed to connect with me (possibly because my expectations were up in the stratosphere) I was beginnig to fear that lightning couldn't strike twice.

Fortunately, Grimspound has reaffirmed BBT's place among the Prog Gods. Every song is a winner, and the album as a whole has a fantastic flow to it. Every musician is of outstanding quality and yet nobody is going on ego-trips. How many ways are there to discribe perfection? With “Brave Captain”, David Longdon, the more direct of the band's two main songsmiths, gives us his best song yet. It's a magnificently heroic and shamelessly bombastic prog piece (and the perfect revenge after the overcluttered “Winkie”). Later, he also gets a beautiful folky ghost story in. Greg Spawton, meanwhile, delivers as is expected of him with some intricate tales of history and romance. Even the less accessible pieces, like the title song and “As The Crow Flies”, reveal themselves to be gems after a few spins.

But Rikard Sjöblom is the real ace in the hole here: he wrote the lion's share of “A Mead Hall In Winter”, the album's absolute show-stopper. It's an epic that is a little bit different than the ususal Spawton-penned fare, but at the same time vintage BBT. I could never fully get into Beardfish, but Sjöblom proves himself to be a more than worthy addition to the ever-expanding BBT troupe. And then there is "Meadowland", a song I want played on my wedding. (Or funeral. Whichever comes first.)

Here's what really makes Grimspound work for me: Enlightenment and romanticism are often considered to be at odds with each other, but Greg Spawton understands that you can have it both ways. Beauty and reason are not mutually exclusive. Although BBT's music is utterly timeless, I feel there's something subtly of the times in the lyrics, which speak in admiration of history's great scientists and artists, as well as the intellectually stimulating environments in which such people thrive. In a world where the arts and sciences are all to often ridiculed, dismissed or villified, the men and women of Big Big Train are not afraid to shine their light into the dark. May 2018 be bright.