When the world began to fall apart, Big Big Train found comfort in writing about it. Their latest album, Common Ground, tries to make sense of chaos and find an emotional escape. Core members Greg Spawton and David Longdon bring Prog up-to-date with the collective’s current line-up and their even bolder musical direction.

Words: Johnny Sharp Portraits: Sophocles Alexiou

Greg Spawton and David Longdon: drivers of this Big Big Train.

“Our hardcore fanbase seem scared shitless that we’re trying to become a pop band or something. You know, some change of direction where they would lose their connection with the band.”

Greg Spawton

To paraphrase a timehonoured saying, some artists are born inspired. Some achieve inspiration, or strive successfully to find it. And some have inspiration thrust upon them. With Big Big Train, on their new album, Common Ground, it was a clear case of the latter. That much is obvious from the opening bars of the first track, The Strangest Times.

There’s little room for ambiguity or metaphor in its lyrics – they pretty much spell out how many of us were feeling in March 2020. ‘These are the strangest times…’ David Longdon sings over a propulsive piano-driven rock backing. ‘This world’s gone mad – we find ourselves in lockdown, trying to get the lowdown, from the PM’s 5pm address. Who could have guessed – these days are going to test us.’

For a band who have often drawn on history to relate tales of everything from art forgers to World War I flying aces and heroic train drivers, to have history happening in the moment, so close to all our homes, was, for David Longdon, too pressing a concern not to write about. So he quickly sounded out the band’s other principal songwriter.

“I spoke with Greg [Spawton],” Longdon explained in the PR material sent out for this record. “I said I couldn’t just be writing songs about historical figures and scenarios [this time]. I needed to write about the here and now.”

It set the tone for what Longdon feels is “an album of transition”. He adds, “We had the opportunity to reimagine what we do to a certain degree.”

That approach manifests itself in a collection of songs and instrumentals that noticeably lean more heavily on personal feelings rather than stories of fascinating figures, and a number of melodically and emotionally direct songs, which seem to chime with times where we’re all feeling less inclined to take for granted the people, the places and the experiences that mean most to us.

Nonetheless, as Greg Spawton tells Prog alongside Longdon on a joint Zoom call, “I didn’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

I thought we need to have a balance of new ideas and some more traditional storytelling stuff.”