The debut album from Birmingham duo, BIG SPECIAL brings together the grim and the glorious. Like many bands before them, they offer a commentary on modern Britain; which usually means state-of-the-nation politicising or slice-of-life tales of relatability. But they don’t quite do it like anybody else. This is a wide-screen vision of small-time encounters. It’s everyday mundanity wrapped in the language of epic poetry.
Frontman, Joe Hicklin, is a powerhouse; a preacher who’s never particularly preachy. Despite the bouts of bombastic poetry, he’s more prone to self-deprecation than self-satisfied grandstanding. From emphatic to brooding to unhinged; his creativity and charisma shine through. He’s as much Bruce Springsteen as he is John Cooper Clarke. And that’s not to understate the work of drummer, Callum Moloney. The driving force in the background; from the rapid-fire onslaught on opener, BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC, to the marching band thump of SHITHOUSE.
There’s a real versatility sitting beneath it all. Soulful electro-punk is my bite-size description for their particular brand of genre fusion, but the deeper you dig into POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES, you’ll discover blues-tinged Americana, dreamy synth-pop, spoken-word minimalist ambience, and much more. This sense of musical movement echoes the conveyer belt of emotional states they put on display; where bold cathartic bursts can emerge from the bleakest moments. Best demonstrated as the album culminates with the triumphant DiG!
One of the key takeaways here is just how BIG this album sounds. It can be bleak and surrealistic but it also, quite simply, has some absolutely huge choruses. It’s a bold, celebratory affirmation that all this weird and seemingly inconsequential shit that happens in our lives still means something.
Rating:
Best Tunes: BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC, TREES, DiG!
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