It would be easy to think that Big Special aren’t a serious band. Coming on stage in cowboy hats, using various keyboard sound effects to comedic effects in between songs, and treating their conversations with the crowd as something akin to mini stand-up sets, are all factors that add to the initial impression of a duo that are mainly here for the jokes. Songs about mocking joggers and thinking you’re Mickey Mouse and/or Cinderella can tend to increase that feeling. There can be absolutely no doubt that a night watching Big Special on stage will result in more belly-laugh moments than your average gig.
But it is the moments when the laughter subsides that you get a sense of how seriously we should all be taking this band right now. This slightly longer than an hour set is a riot of some kind or another from start to finish, but the moments when Joseph Hicklin looks into the audience and sings from the bottom of his gut are almost awe-inducing. ‘Black Dog / White Horse’ is one such song. Standing just a few feet from the man, I felt every single emotion in the amazing performance of this track. Later in the set, it was the immensely powerful ‘Dust Off / Start Again’ that really gave Hicklin chance to let out his demons. It was captivating. And while bandmate Callum Moloney might have initially joked about the poetic status of Hicklin, each time we were treated to a more pared back reading of a poem it was emotional enough to bring a tear to the eye. I have never before seen a crowd chant the word ‘poetry’ with so much fervour and love.
I’ve been obsessively listening to the band’s debut album Post-Industrial Hometown Blues since it was released the week before last, but it was only after seeing them at Deaf Institute that I was able to fully grasp why they had gotten such a hold of me. The fit firmly in a genre I have been enjoying a lot over the last few years – bands like Benefits, Yard Act, Fontaines DC, and English Teacher will all hear bits of themselves in this band. But Big Special have such a rare mix of attributes that might make them stand above all of these acts in the long run – they’re hilarious, politically astute without being preachy, musically accomplished, able to speak-sing in a way that doesn’t get annoying, but, at the same time, Hicklin is blessed with an absolute belter of a voice that allows him to do things some contemporaries cannot.
Songs such as ‘This Here Ain’t Water’, ‘Desperate Breakfast’, and, of course, ‘Dig!’ all give that voice a real chance to shine – and were all among the many highlights of the setlist. For me personally, though, while it came quite early in the set due to them playing the album in order, ‘Shithouse’ is the best song of 2024 so far and was a definite standout on the night. Hicklin uses his facial expressions to great effect, and it was hard to stop smiling all the way through the song that they ‘can’t get played on the radio’ for some reason.
It’s quite hard to accurately describe the feeling there was in the room at this show. I, for one, felt lucky and smug to be seeing them in such a tiny venue – I don’t think that will happen again. Everyone in the crowd seemed to sense that we were witnessing something special and exciting, that this could be the beginning of a band’s explosion. And what made that even sweeter was that, during a moment when the audience screamed and applauded non-stop for close to five minutes, you could see that Hicklin and Moloney were blown away by the reaction they were receiving. It feels like Big Special don’t yet realise how special they really are. After a performance like the one they gave on Saturday night, they better get used to the idea.
Words by Fran Slater
Picky Bastards 