You want ketchup with that? Raucous post-punk duo will us to dance our problems away with surprise sophomore drop.
Well this one was a turn up for the books. As I was tucking in to my bacon sarnie this morning, a BIG SPECIAL record was the least in what to expect on my desk. I has just thought that it was the King being his patriotic self in charge of the button when those projections of egg and chips first appeared on Buckingham Palace. But no, turns out it was a subtle marketing campaign from BIG SPECIAL, who arguably, are one of the most exhilarating duos within the world of alternative right now.
Since the pair came into our heinous lives and released the might of their debut POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES on the precipice of Summer last year and relentlessly toured the record to an inch of its life, we have been studiously waiting on tenterhooks for when the two of them would announce new music coming. Turns out we didn’t have to wait at all for it. – for any announcement in fact.
One of our most outlandish post-punk duo are back with a surprise album drop today, coined NATIONAL AVERAGE. It’s impressive that they found any time to sort out a new record in a years’ span, considering the sprawls of tours and festival headline spots they’ve landed on.
But they’re here, nonetheless. No doubt eager to serve us the type of eggs we want: whopping servings of doozy dark humour, dogmatic commentary often belted behind beats and chords that will take the wind right out of your sails.
A follow-up to their immense debut a year ago, the egg-and-chip sophomore is a darkening reflection of the boys’ journey since they began travelling the nation and shouting their poetry at people just a little over a year ago. Amongst their existential bellowings and obtuse colourings of lyrical insanity, it’s an album thats shifted in weight and folly in keeping with Big Special’s flair of the blackest humour – but at its heart is that obtuse honesty that we all heavily dote on like a close ones’ embrace or that first sip of a post-work pint on a Friday.
An expansion in sound which sees the pair draw up their funky trousers and an introspective eagled-eye view into the heavies of modern life on everyone’s shoulders, NATIONAL AVERAGE just sees them take it up a notch or two with a flurry of fun ideas. Just to give you a few to dive in if you have TikTok brain and do not wish to partake in the way the project is intended to be used; SHOP MUSIC. and THE BEAST. garnish themselves as fast and funky stand-outs.
If you want to listen to the lead single (as you would’ve done a few months ago on its own), then that will be GOD SAVE THE PONY. A confident charge of funky kickings down the road, it a classic BIG SPECIAL homage to life’s bullsh*t. Lead singer Joe Hicklin throws his two cents in about it and states that “it’s about the stones we carry. The different things that pull people down; the invisible weights that they have to drag through their everyday. On the personal level, it’s about reckoning with change.” Amongst the serious though, there’s still the slapstick that keeps it forever grounded like true British nonsense, as Hicklin begins his poetic parade with “Every band is a big band to someone, even if it’s just the c*nts that are in one.” Brilliant.
At first glimpse, the record is a stellar reprise from a band that had seemingly silence themselves into obscurity. At second glimpse, it may be the surprising factor which is swaying our conclusions, considering we had none of that anti-climactic build up with this record. But still, it’s a refreshing change of pace for an artist to release music on their own terms and not squirm to the undulating numbers’ man at these label suppositories.
Irrespective of whatever side of the fence you are on with the whole Bob Vylan debacle right now, today’s punk has never sounded so good.
manvmusic.com 
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