The Crossing

Big Country - The Crossing

The Crossing
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Big Country
Edition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2002-02-05
Music Label: Island / Mercury
Soundtracks:
  1. In a Big Country
  2. Inwards
  3. Chance
  4. 1,000 Stars
  5. The Storm
  6. Harvest Home
  7. Lost Patrol
  8. Close Action
  9. Fields of Fire
  10. Porrohman
  11. Wonderland
  12. All Fall Together
  13. Angle Park
  14. The Crossing
  15. Chance (re-recorded single version)

Free Music Notes for The Crossing

Free Music Review: Stuart Adamson's Lost Patrol
Hit: 5 Stars

Cynically, one must wonder how the long-awaited remastered version of this record has come out just a couple of months after the sad death of band leader Stuart Adamson. I was the arts editor at the University of Hawaii campus newspaper when this record first came out in 1983. Were it not for the expensive foil printing on the royal blue album jacket, I may not have noticed it at all amongst the dozens of review copies that arrived every other week. Since Big Country was produced, like U2, by Steve Lillywhite, and gushed forth with spiritual, anthemic (albeit Scottish, not Irish) rock songs, like U2, I tabbed them as Polygram's attempt to cash in on U2's soaring popularity.

Then I realized the rhythm section was the same as had played on Pete Townsend's solo record, and that the other two members of the band were hot guitarists, apparently psychically linked, so blisteringly smooth were their arrangements. For pure craftsmanship, most of The Crossing I liked, and have liked, better than the U2 album of that year, The Unforgettable Fire.

Now, U2 was on its way to Honolulu for a concert and I openly dreamed that Big Country would be opening for its labelmates. But the band never made it to Hawaii, and as far as I can tell, Stuart Adamson was making his first visit to Hawaii when he went there and committed suicide in December 2001. So much for my personal irony.

The glory of this remastered CD is that it finally puts on CD all the power and passion of the album. The existing CD pressing was God awful, the sound was compressed, the cymbal crashes of drummer Mark Brezecki (sp) sounded like tin foil being ripped.
This new version is a revelation: lots of low end punch, each guitar part can be heard separate from the other. Vocals are about the same, but the dynamic range has been restored. Drum-heavy songs such as "In A Big Country," "Inwards" "1000 Stars" and "Porroh Man" will vibrate the speakers out of your car doors. Brezecki is like Carl Palmer and John Bonham in one body.

The bonus tracks can qualify as lost classics, particularly the long-absent title track, "The Crossing," which is seven minutes of all there is to like about the band: Adamson dreaming about some peaceful, easy feeling he never found, he and Bruce Watson playing double guitar leads, the whole band cranking out this sound that never caught on with the American mainstream.

Ultimately, Big Country is an acquired taste. Their use of E-bows make their guitars sound like tortured bagpipes and Adamson's Brogue accent makes his most impassioned words come out unintelligible at times. He pronounces "iron" as "I run," for example. Luckily, lyrics have been included.

Hands down, this is the most unique 80s band ever.

The Crossing Poster

Digitally remastered and expanded deluxe two CD edition of the Scottish band's 1983 debut album including 24 bonus tracks. This double disc set, released to mark the 30th Anniversary of the formation of Big Country, now includes a plethora of demos, outtakes and b-sides. The enhanced packaging includes a 20-page booklet featuring sleeve-notes by the respected author and journalist, Tim Barr, as well as previously unseen photographs. Includes the hits 'In A Big Country', 'Fields Of Fire' and 'Chance'. Universal.
A former member of the late '70s English punk band the Skids, guitarist/vocalist Stuart Adamson went to Scotland in 1982 to form a group whose goals were to regain the idealism and passion he felt the punk/new wave movement had lost through commercialization. Tapping U2's producer, Steve Lillywhite, then known for his highly textured, expansive sound, Adamson realized his vision on Big Country's 1983 debut. Propelled by the hit single "In a Big Country," and featuring such rousingly evocative fare as "Fields of Fire" and "Harvest Home," the group's decidedly Scotch-Irish tone prefigured the Celtic music boom by a good 10 years. --Billy Altman

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