More epic 80s musical vistas, or as one reviewer mockingly put it at the time, “music to march around your bedroom to.” Nonetheless, 15-year-old me bought into Big Country big time. Guitar heroics to spare, drums that sounded like canons going off and endless earnestness sucked me right in. Some of it holds up; a lot of it does not. However, this is the album that first got me interested in production, so I guess it was my first step on the road to Pro Sound News. Their first UK single flopped, so they re-recorded it for this album and that track became a personal favorite; a few years later, I found that flop single and was amazed at how dull and lifeless it was. I realized that if it was the same song and same band, the difference had to be the producer they worked with—Steve Lillywhite, who also worked with U2, DMB, Simple Minds, Siouxsie and everyone else. A few years back, Lillywhite kindly signed my LP and I got to tell him that story, which he loved. (For the record, drummer Mark Brzezicki also signed it at one point).