BIG SPECIAL on hope, desperation, and new album 'O'JOY!' • Interview • DIY Magazine

For BIG SPECIAL, honesty is the beginning and the end of everything. “Nina Simone has this quote,” shares Joe Hicklin, firebrand vocalist of the Midlands duo. He leans forward, “she says ‘an artist’s duty is to reflect the times’, and that’s our only rule: represent yourself and the times you are in!”

For the past few years, this hard-edged and forthright integrity has been the driving force behind BIG SPECIAL’s writing, and undoubtedly their unbridled success. Across a brimming magazine of EPs and an acerbic brace of full-lengths, BIG SPECIAL have substantiated themselves as punk poets par excellence. In channelling the vitriol of IDLES with the kitchen-sink surrealism of Sleaford Mods, the duo have managed to create something that goes further, into waters unknown, unparalleled and wholly unrestrained.

Speaking to Joe on a sunny Spring morning, it’s evident that these beliefs are fundamental to everything the project stands for and everything it has been built on. “How can we be honest and authentic and representative without it being about working class life, without it being political, without it being a bit sad, a bit dark and all that sort of thing?” he asks earnestly.

It’s this notion that has charged their upcoming record: ‘O’JOY!’, a collection of dark, conscious, futuristic punk cuts that felt out of place on their previous two LPs, but have now found a fitting home. After time spent back in the studio, Joe and drummer Callum Moloney have reworked and repackaged these lost pieces into a 10-track EP (in name only) that wades into the mire of post-Brexit Britain to challenge the nihilism of our time, reemerging with something cathartic and optimistically hopeful.

“We had all these tunes in the bank that didn’t make it onto the first two albums, so we took them back to the studio and tried to make a cohesive record out of them,” Joe notes as he breaks down the background of ‘O’JOY!’. “And I think this little record sits nicely in between the two, like a little movie prequel or something - we basically wanted to empty the clip.”

On speaking this morning, it’s clear that for BIG SPECIAL this sense of reflection is paramount to their artistic process. Only two years ago did their debut LP, ‘Postindustrial Hometown Blues’ come forth, followed by a second full-length album last year. For the duo, this newfound reality of accelerated success is still a tricky thing to contend with.

“I think we’re still getting our head around it.” Joe admits. “It’s literally only the last couple of months where we’ve slowed down and looked back since it kicked off when we were 30. So it has been a big shake up. My life is completely unrecognisable to what it was two years ago, from where I live to who I live with and everything.”

“The big overarching themes over all three of our records — especially ‘O’JOY!’ — is hope and desperation.”

— Joe Hicklin

Joe and Callum had been friends since their teen years, growing up in and around the post-industrial environs of the Midlands. But it was only the anxious mundanity of the COVID-19 lockdowns that spawned the formation of BIG SPECIAL when the two began sharing snippets of tracks between each other. From there, their soulful brand of sample-heavy, folk-infused poetic punk has taken them from the ridges and seams of the Black Country to lands far beyond, with a broad North American tour later this year peeking over the horizon.

Despite these successes, the changes undergone are still a shock to the group. “I think I’m still in the middle of all that really, it all happened so quickly, how do you reckon with all the changes?” he admits as we talk about the rate of their rise. “My brother still does the job that we used to do together, which is labouring and removals and stuff like that, and I’ve definitely got this guilt in me. This is my work today: having a chat with you about the music and I feel guilty for it. My brother’s out digging holes in the sun and I’m talking with you!”

Joe is nothing short of grateful when considering his current situation, but also conscious of how these changes can affect the art. For him and Callum, their first record crackled with the white heat of desperation that burgeoning artists embody, of wanting this to work out; wanting to make a living from art. But when that actually happens and your reality is changed, a bevy of confusion and uncertainty can follow in its wake. Concerns about being detached from your old life that informed the work, not being able to relate to your audience anymore, and presenting an out of touch image are all worries, especially for an act that is so steeped in unpretentious relatability.

“I heard this quote years ago,” he recalls. “‘The environment never fails the poet.’ Which I really like because you hear a lot of excuses from people who talk about doing art and worry ‘but I’m like this, or I’m like that, or it’s not for me and blah, blah, blah’. But the reality is if you want to, if it’s in there, you can because you’re a unique individual who’s lived a life. Every moment can be looked at as a composed piece of art if you want it to. You don’t have to disregard your past because you’re in a better position now. That’s still you - that’s still your life. My writing will always come from the perspective of this little fat working class kid with no confidence. That’s who is holding the pen - everything else is what’s changed around that little kid.”

And it’s this sense of repurposing past experiences for the future that fuels ‘O’JOY!’. While the duo are in different material worlds to when they wrote these tunes, the sentiments brought forth in the record are as relevant and immediate today as when they were written. In a nation of ever-increasing wealth disparity, sparse socioeconomic opportunity for young people, and fascistic ideology veering ever closer to the mainstream, the role of art to speak aloud is more pressing than ever - something ‘O’JOY!’ is all too aware of.

“I think we want to take the darkness of what we do and turn that into a joyful thing.”

— Joe Hicklin

‘O’JOY!’ is undoubtedly a darker turn. From the ominous and damning prophecy of ‘PLAINTIVE NATIVE’ mourning a people too downtrodden to care for their future, or the reflective ‘DRAGGED UP A HILL (and thrown down the other side)’ documenting a narrator going nowhere in life, to the nihilism of ‘LAZARUS’ which orders the biblical figure famous for reincarnation not to bother as there’s “no new beginning in the ground”, ‘O’JOY!’ is a bleak dissection of the failing state of Britain in the mid-2020s.

But while BIG SPECIAL are keen to scratch at the omnipresent faultlines of this country, they are conscious for this work not to be without hope. “You’re exorcising the demons when writing this sort of thing,” notes Joe when asked about the record’s themes. “By doing so you’ve turned it into something good, that’s why it’s called, ‘O’JOY!’ It’s that sense of irony you get when people say, ‘oh, joy,’ when they mean the complete opposite.”

For Joe and Callum, there is catharsis in producing the work seen on ‘O’JOY!’ and with that lies the power to speak up, and with that, there is hope. “The big overarching themes over all three of our records - especially ‘O’JOY!’ - is hope and desperation,” he states.

“The songs all come from similar places of inspiration but it’s more about turning that shit into something good. It’s fun to make a song! Let’s talk about depression or something. If you turn those feelings into a song that never existed before, and then you take that to your best friend and you work on that together, and then you get to the studio and then you turn that into a piece of music that you’re proud of, then something positive has come from that darkness.”

It’s this underlying optimism that characterises BIG SPECIAL. In the chaos of their live shows, the poetry of their lyricism, and the heft of their records, honesty and hope are ever present. “That’s how you deliver the message, that’s the spoonful of sugar. You have a bit of a laugh, and then you can talk about depression, and social deprivation and political hopelessness,” he shares.

“I think we want to take the darkness of what we do and turn that into a joyful thing.” He adjusts his trucker cap and fixes his gaze. “Something where everyone gets together and agrees with each other that, ‘yeah, our life is shit, but we’re here together now and we can share it.’”

‘O’JOY!’ is out now via SO Recordings / Silva Screen Records.

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