Big Country

Here's a big-noise guitar band from Britain that blows the knobs off all the synth-pop
diddlers and fake-funk frauds who are cluttering up the charts these days. Big Country
mops up the fops with an air-raid guitar sound that's unlike anything else around,
anywhere, and if their debut album promises more than the four musicians can quite
deliver at this stage in their young career, what it does deliver – especially on t... More >

With its bagpipe guitars and Celtic blues lines, Stuart Adamson's Skids-U2 hybrid avoids any hint of rock purism. Although "Chance" is the only fully realized song here, the rest sound good from a distance. But I wish Adamson didn't sing like Colonel Bryan Bowie and, even worse, write like Bishop Kahlil Masefield. Regaled with martial rhythms, I always feel safer knowing exactly what the war's about. (Grade: B)