Big Special
Postindustrial Hometown Blues LP vinyl

Words are not to be taken for granted. Especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage. Words matter. History matters. People matter. And Big Special matter.

For Big Special - Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums) - their sound is one that comes from vital, frustrated young working-class voices that don’t always get heard on the scale they should do. It’s a frustration that comes to the fore through a voice that is at times coarse and raw, but sensitive, desperate and soulful at others. Hicklin's brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, arriving siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. It’s wrought, raw and angry at a world lacking options, the thinning of the common understanding between the social classes of England, exasperation at repeating cycles, and the feeling that you’re watching your own life unfold from the outside.

These are songs that channel that voice you hear when you look in the mirror and see your true self – fight songs for a world gone wrong.

NEW / Released in 2024

Tracklist:

A1 Black Country Gothic

A2 I Mock Joggers

A3 Desperate Breakfast

A4 Shithouse

A5 This Here Ain't Water

A6 My Shape (Blocking The Light)

A7 Black Dog / White Horse

B1 Broadcast: Time Away

B2 Ill.

B3 Mongrel

B4 Butcher's Bin

B5 Dust Off / Start Again

B6 Trees

B7 For The Birds

B8 Dig!