Big Special

UK first press 2024. Limited Edition, Zoetrope Edition. LTD 750.
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.