The Big Goodbye

Imagine that years after your favorite television series had ended (be it Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Stath Lets Flats, Twin Peaks or any other), you learned that additional episodes had been shot during the show’s best years and were about to be released in pristine quality. Would it matter that you had already watched dozens of episodes from the same season?

In a way, the Searchers are a footnote. Never entering the upper echelon of British Invasion beat groups, the band nevertheless had legs, outlasting all but the titans of the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who. The Searchers always flew just below the radar, even if they had something of a renaissance at the tail end of the '70s with a new lineup headed by lead singer – and only constant – John McNally, with his lead guitarist companion Mike Pender directing the band through two superb power pop LPs and their jangle echoing in the stable of Shelter Records, heard strongly in the early records of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. They are best known for their earliest hits – 1963's "Sweets for My Sweet," 1964's "Needles and Pins" – which may be because they were their biggest hits but it's also because the Searchers never abandoned their pure pop template throughout their entire career, something that becomes blindingly evident over the course of the four-disc box set Hearts in Their Eyes.

Goodbye to the Age of Steam is Big Big Train's first album, originally released in 1994. The album has been unavailable for many years and is reissued on 18th April 2011. To ensure the best possible audio quality, "Goodbye…" has been re-mixed by Rob Aubrey from the original master-tapes. The reissue includes new artwork and a 12-page booklet with lyrics and sleeve-notes. The reissue also features three bonus tracks; an extended version of 'Losing Your Way', a previously unreleased track called 'Far Distant Thing' (taken from a 1993 radio session), and 'Expecting Dragons', a recording by the current BBT line-up which re-works some of the musical themes from Goodbye to the Age of Steam.