Gig review: Big Country
THE singalong started even before the band came on, when the pre-show music included Into the Valley – the 1979 hit single by The Skids, which the late Stuart Adamson left to form Big Country in 1981. This intimate familiarity with an outfit whose heyday was a quarter-century ago underscored both the vintage and the diehard devotion of a boisterous capacity audience, and subsequently extended into word-perfect bellowed choruses of all the classic songs.
Following Adamson's death in 2001, Big Country eventually re-formed last year, with his former bandmates – guitarist Bruce Watson, bassist Tony Butler and drummer Mark Brzezicki – recruiting The Alarm's frontman Mike Peters as lead singer, and adding Watson's son Jamie on a second electric guitar. An initial run of sellout shows confirmed they'd not been forgotten in their absence, and while a smattering of new material here suggested that – at least thus far – they've little fresh to offer, their commitment, conviction and evident enjoyment were more than matched by the fans, who were evidently happy to join them in reliving their youth. The finer points of anthems like A Thousand Stars, Chance, Look Away, Restless Natives and In a Big Country – and finer points there were, originally, not only in the bagpipe-style guitar lines but a wealth of memorable melodic hooks and folk-based rhythms – were largely lost among the roar of the crowd and a blitz of punk/thrash attack, but for sheer sweaty fervour it was just like the old days.