Big Special On Emptying Pockets Of Old Songs, Recontextualising Them, And Giving Them A Home

Ahead of their new EP ‘O’ JOY!’ made up of tracks from the cutting room floor, we chat to Black Country duo Big Special

Big Special have always been a band of evolution; they are simply impossible to pin down. The Black Country duo of Joe Hicklin and Cal Moloney have got their own seat at the table after years of grafting 9-to-5 to make music that is working class to its bones: bruised, cinematic, politically awake but never preachy.

Two albums deep and fresh off two years touring, they’re not done yet. Before they start the new chapter of Big Special, they’ve gone back through the hard drive to rescue the songs that almost made it, the ones that circled close to albums one and two before falling just outside the frame.

The result is ‘O’ JOY!‘, an EP they’re calling a prequel, a clearing of pockets, a last look back before an exciting change in direction. We sat down with Joe and Cal to talk off-cuts that don’t feel like off-cuts, working-class guilt in the music industry, and the Kate Bush record they keep returning to.

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Your upcoming release is an EP of songs that didn’t make album 1 or 2. What made you revisit them?

Cal: We’ve been spending so much time on the road over the past two years. We put out two albums, each with around 25-26 songs that could have featured. As we have time at home now to look back over the last few years, before we move on to writing new things, we thought why don’t we mould the songs that almost made the first and second album into an extended play.

Some of these songs were written in 2018 and circled close to being a single or on an album, so we took them back into the studio and recontextualised them. After being on tour for three years, all the songs’ meanings have changed, sonically they’ve changed to us. It was putting together a really simple jigsaw in the end, it was all just there.

Joe: It was nice to empty of our pockets of all the things we’ve worked on. When we make our next album, we knew we wouldn’t come back to the songs. But we were also wary of putting together an offcuts album. We talked about it but in the end we took them back into the studio and gave them a revamp.

Why call it an EP and not an album?

Joe: It’s probably why they didn’t end up on previous albums; it’s about finding the right place for the songs at the right time. We’re calling it an EP, as we’re precious about what we call an album. This is a prequel like they do in the movies.

Cal: Are you saying this is our Phantom Menace?

Joe: This is our Phantom Menace.

How do you think the output has changed compared to earlier releases after some time away from touring?

Joe: We still have the narrative structure to it. Everything we do is internal, but it helps us getting it across to relate it to external factors. The first album felt external; we were painting the picture of “we are all the same no matter what we’re going through”. The second album was a very small bracket of experience about us being able to do this job. The EP stands in the middle, it ends up being some of the darker and sombre tunes, it’s a confused little thing in a chaotic space.

Cal: Songs were originally about external parts of life, now we’ve had three/four years off. The thing that inspired the songs like work and life have shifted underneath our feet. ‘Dragged Up A Hill’ was written at a completely different time of life, there’s ever-shifting plates underneath it. It’s funny watching songs we’ve written become recontextualised with our life, we never thought the meaning would change.

Joe: We could have wrote them yesterday from a completely different point of view and it’d still be the same song.

Cal: The last song on the EP is called ‘Hotel’, it was written way before we were doing this job. Now if you take it by face value it’s about us touring right now. By giving you all we have and all we’ve ever had, all we can do now is go and build something else. It’s like the awkward moment when someone at the end of a gig asks for an encore but you ain’t got no more songs- we’ve now got to make some new stuff.

We’ve already had a taste of the EP through the single ‘Plaintive Native’. It’s got some fire to it. Does the rest of the EP follow this theme?

Cal: That one was one of the newest songs on there, all the way up to the final week of writing album 2, it was set to be on it. We wrote ‘God Save The Pony’ on the final week of the writing session, I think that shifted the tone of the previous album which led to us taking it off.  So it still feels very current, it’s still relevant and applied right now. It just needed a breather.

Joe: In anything we do we like to have a cohesive sounding thing with different dynamics along the ride. This one we liked starting aggressive and angry, slowly condensing down. Bringing it back to internal/external, ‘Plaintive Native’ is a lot more “I’m angry, this is pissing me off”, then bringing it back to ‘Dragged Up A Hill’, it’s still angry but the reaction is just different. Songs get seen as statements of intent, but for most people who make anything it’s just an emotional reaction to something.

What is the reaction to?

Joe: Being a little bit older than most bands, we had a lot of time in our lives to be cemented into our lifestyles. Life is still changing and upside down, it’s strange because I feel wrapped up in my own shit, instead of being focused on external shit. It makes me feel guilty that I’m not as informed as before. We’d never say we were a political band in the way that we’d nail ourselves to a fence post for what we create.

Working class art is inherently political, we talk about political things in our songs as it’s relevant to the time we are in rather than us trying to specifically write something political. We wear our politics on our sleeve. We said “Free Palestine” at a gig and someone shouted out ‘Fuck Palestine’, getting all angry, like have you not listened to us? I thought our politics were obvious.

Cal: In my head, sometimes outwardly labelling as political is “I’m political and I’m going to tell you the answers”, we’ve never once claimed we have any answers. We’re not aspiring to lead, but we’re happy to point out how shit things are. We can only reflect the world around us.

As a duo you’ve been proud advocates of working-class inclusion in the music industry. How has your personal experience been?

Joe: We did music for 16 years, and now it’s gone well for us. Almost feel guilty. There’s definitely a moral guilt as this is my day’s work, and my brother’s somewhere digging holes in the ground. We’ve been lucky with our team and our rise; we wear what we are on our sleeve and are not shy about it. So people don’t try to push it away. We try and be articulate and clear about what we stand for, instead of being pushed into things.

Cal: Taking a stab in the dark, most people you come into contact with are privately educated. The issue with the major labels, when 99% people are from that background is they want to put out music that isn’t from that background, but making it a product in business terms. Our label knew what we were about and what we wanted to make and stayed hands off. We try and work with working class individuals, it’s rare to meet them so when you do it’s a “Oh yeah hello!” and that sense of community.

Joe: We were at a festival in Italy once, chatting after our gig and a guy said it was just nice to meet normal lads from similar ends. It is surprisingly rare. 

Cal: There is definitely a flocking together. We moved to Brighton recently and met Antony Szmierek, working class hero of Manchester, who moved down as well. People who’ve worked normal jobs for so long like us, who now live this brand-new life. We’re the new kids on the block, but with bad backs. We can see that in other artists we’ve become good friends with. There’s been a resurgence of working-class pride, when the talent becomes undeniable people can’t do anything about it. Like the band Panic Shack, who have ascended to a place no one thought they would go. We always say we’ve won; we’re living off our art now. We’ve won the game.

Joe: And that’s why everything is political, because we’ve been victorious over the ‘system’.

Are there any smaller bands you think deserve a greater platform?

Joe: GANS are smashing it. We brought them on our tour and they’re still touring now separately. There’s an extra layer of emotion as they’ve been with us since the off, seeing them go up and up is great. I’d tell anyone to listen to them.

Cal: We’ve got our mates Good Health Good Wealth as well, they’ve been grafting at it for ages. Fully independent and keeping it in house. Great live set and great energy.

One of the tracks on the EP is ‘Lazarus‘, a remodel of the track you performed with John Grant.

Cal: We overthought that one over to oblivion. It was one of the first songs we wrote, we assumed it was too guitar and rock heavy so pushed away from it. But when the opportunity to play with John Grant came up, that felt like the perfect fit. We were going over the hard drive and fucking hell, we could have written it last week. Why were we worried about the guitar? We refreshed it and gave it more of a live energy.

If there was an album that you think has helped shape the bands journey, what would it be?

Cal: ‘Hounds of Love‘.

Joe: I was going to say the same thing.

Cal: We want our music to be cinematic. What is more cinematic than ‘Hounds of Love‘? It’s an album of two halves, the boldness, the production. 

Joe: They are all very distinct singular pieces, yet they fit together. That’s why we went back into the studio with some of the songs; we want it all to still be a nice piece of work that represents us.

Cal: She’s an artist we aspire to be. We’ve never wanted to be a band you can pin down. She has such unhinged creativity. Like Tom Waits. All the songs sound different yet you know it’s by them.

The new EP, ‘O’JOY!‘, is out on 5^th June via SO Recordings.

Listen to ‘ONLY FREE WHEN SLEEPING’ here:

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