Big Country (GB)

About

Few British bands from the early 1980s had a sound as immediately recognisable as Big Country. The Dunfermline outfit, built around Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson, ran their guitars through pitch transposers and e bows to conjure something that sounded uncannily like bagpipes and strings, giving their rock a distinctly Scottish character without leaning on any actual folk instruments. Their debut album The Crossing broke into the US Top 20 and spawned their only American Top 40 hit, "In a Big Country", while back home follow ups Steeltown and The Seer both cracked the UK top ten. The Seer is particularly worth revisiting: it features Kate Bush on the title track and produced "Look Away", which hit number one in Ireland. After Adamson's death in 2001 the classic lineup went quiet, but surviving members eventually reconvened in 2007. Singer Mike Peters came aboard and the band worked their way back into the studio, releasing The Journey in 2013, their first collection of new material in fourteen years. Along the way they also contributed the score to the cult Scottish film Restless Natives, which neatly sums up how much of their identity was always tied to where they came from.