Big Big Train in Barcelona: a masterclass in symphonic rock

Progressive Rock

Two sets, nearly two and a half hours and “Woodcut” in full: Big Big Train at Razzmatazz 2, in words and photos.

On Wednesday 7 October we got to see Big Big Train in Barcelona for the first time, thanks to the work of the promoter Neverland Concerts, which managed to bring this multinational band to the city. The group of musicians behind such an artistic feat was made up of Alberto Bravin (lead vocals, guitar and keyboards), Gregory Spawton (bass, bass pedals and vocals), Rikard Sjöblom (guitar and vocals), Oskar Holldorff (keyboards and vocals), Clare Lindley (violin and vocals), Paul Mitchell (trumpet and vocals) and Nick D'Virgilio (drums and vocals).

In front of some five hundred people, the band played a show that ran for almost two and a half hours, plus an interval of about twenty minutes, split into two sets.

The first part of the show, whose common thread was England, its memory and its landscape, went through part of the career of this long-lived band, formed in 1990 in Bournemouth (Dorset, England). They brought back “Salisbury Giant” (“Folklore”, 2016), “London Plane” (“Folklore”, 2016), “Swan Hunter” (“English Electric Part Two”, 2013), the exuberant “Kingmaker” (EP “Far Skies Deep Time”, 2011) and the closing pair, with a drum-and-trumpet interlude brilliantly and masterfully played by Nick D'Virgilio and Paul Mitchell: “Lost Rivers of London” (EP “Wassail”, 2015, also on the vinyl of “Folklore”) and “East Coast Racer” (“English Electric Part Two”, 2013). In this first set the band sounded completely tight and compact, with an immense Alberto Bravin who emerged as an outstanding frontman and gave these songs new life with his versatile vocal range.

The second set, supported by projections, was given over to playing their latest album, “Woodcut” (2026), in full: a concept album built around the relationship between an artist who carves wooden figures and his creation. The work reflected every mood and emotion of a creator through music. It opened with “Inkwell Black/The Artist”, a delicate overture in which the “Genesis-like” arpeggiated guitars stand out, with the other instruments woven in between powerful instrumental sections and Alberto Bravin's voice. The set went on with the rest of “Woodcut”, from which we single out “The Sharpest Blade”; “Chimaera”, a song markedly influenced by the American sounds of the bands Nick D'Virgilio (ex-Spock's Beard) and Rikard Sjöblom (Beardfish) come from; “Dreams in Black and White”, with a stratospheric solo by Rikard Sjöblom; the breathless “Cut and Run”; the soothing “Light Without Heat”; and the magical “Counting Stars”, in which the music captured perfectly the mimicry between the artist, the creation and its surroundings. The show ended with “Last Stand”, a golden finish to a musically impeccable concert in which it was hard to single out one musician over another, and which was only tarnished by the sound in the room, which did not do justice to the audience's sonic experience.

All in all, the tour has been a turning point in Big Big Train's musical path, consolidating this new stage with Alberto Bravin up front. The two-set format highlighted the capacity for growth and the resilience of this group of musicians in the face of tragic and unexpected events inside the band, such as the death, in 2021, of their lead singer David Longdon. In the view of the writer, “Woodcut” is an allegory of the band itself, which showed the different moods of the creative process and its surroundings. Musically it reflects the choral contribution of the different musicians, in which new nuances in the compositions could be appreciated; hints of Kansas, Spock's Beard or Beardfish blended naturally with Big Big Train's own distinctive sound.

Carles Pinós · 9 October 2026

More on Big Big Train: the concert preview, the interview with Gregory Spawton.

Report: Carles Pinós. Photographs: Enric Minguillón.