Black Country duo Big Special discuss debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues ahead of XOYO gig

Big Special release their debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues on Friday and this week will headline Birmingham’s XOYO as part of a UK tour to mark its release.

In the last four years, singer Joe Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney have taken an idea conceived during lockdown and released a run of acclaimed singles, toured across the UK and in March performed to 14,000 people in Chile while supporting Placebo in South America.

“It’s been a complete culture shock, a life shock,” admits Moloney.

“I always make the same joke – that one day I’m going to wake up and I’ve been in a coma.

“I was in a bad accident and I’ve just been in Good Hope Hospital for three years just dreaming of this band.”

It hasn’t been an overnight success though. Hicklin and Moloney’s friendship dates back to their teenage years growing up in Walsall and attending Matthew Bolton College in Birmingham together.

The pair have spent half their lives playing in bands or performing solo – reuniting after a decade of not making music together when Hicklin conceived the idea for Big Special.

“The path of becoming a musician has been very, very, very, f***ing long,” Moloney says.

“God bless our partners who have been waiting for us to make something of ourselves.

“Since the band started to now, seems like the blink of an eye. I still don't think we've processed it. I don't really know what to say, I almost downplay it.”

The title of Big Special’s debut and the opening track Black Country Gothic both go a long way to help define their sound.

Across its 13-tracks, there’s moments of post-punk, gothic blues and soul - all set to dark, personal and vulnerable lyricism which still manage to meld in a quintessentially West Midlands sense of humour.

When Hicklin first contacted Moloney about Big Special, the latter admits he didn’t immediately buy into the project.

“When Joe was explaining it was going to be punkier and there’s going to be poems, I couldn’t quite see his vision so initially I said no,” he explains.

However, when Hicklin sent over a demo for former single This Here Ain’t Water, Moloney was convinced.

“I didn’t know I was going to be able to hear your accent in it,” he tells Hicklin.

At that time, Hicklin already had the title Postindustrial Hometown Blues in mind.

“I’ve had the album name longer than the band,” he says.

“All the songs are coming from that sort of place.”

The pair headed into the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020 with initial ideas but didn’t start gigging until 2022.

By the time they were playing live together, the songs started to take a more energetic, punkier form.

“It was a bit softer in its energy before and I think as it's grown with us it's sort of become a bit more of a tantrum filled teenager with a bit more weight behind it, a bit more aggro,” explains Moloney.

Looking ahead to the release of the album this week, Hicklin says he can’t wait for it to be finally in the wild.

“You’re a proper band when you’ve got your album out,” he says.

“Working on the album was the start of the band really - it was like an album project.

“As we took it to the stage and found out what the live show was like, that re-informed some of the songs so we added that sort of stuff back in at the studio as well.

“I think it was softer before as well because we were making it in producer Mikes’ attic or doing bits and pieces at home.

“You use what you’ve got, it was all programmed drums at first, but when you’re on a label we could go, ‘listen guys, we want to re-do the drums for the whole album,’ and we did that in the last week.

“The two natural, organic elements are my voice and Cal’s drums so it was nice to get the real nice drums down on the album for the extra life.”

Big Special’s debut single S***house was released last year – a track which was maybe somewhat doomed from the outset to pick up little radio play thanks to its title and the expletives littered throughout the track. (Six S***houses, 15 F***ings and one S*** - in case you’re counting).

There was a radio edit called Bleep House which Moloney brands ‘ridiculous’.

“The only geezer who had the stones to play it was Steve Lamacq,” he explains. “Big up Steve Lamacq.”

Lamacq and also Brum Radio he adds – which accidently played the uncensored version.

“There was a lot of apologising but it was kinda funny,” says Moloney.

“But, that song kicked all of this stuff off for us.”

The story goes that Big Special’s A&R rep was having some tiling done by one of Joe’s school friends. That friend was playing a version of S***house Big Special had self-released.

“Adam loved it, checked it off with his mates and gave us a buzz and now we’re gigging in South America and doing all this crazy bull****,” Moloney jokes.

“It’s a song that not only captures the energy of the band in its very dark, heavy lyrics, but it’s said in a classic Midlands tongue-in-cheek way.

“We can't face any darkness without a bit of joy and a bit of f***ing silliness to it.

“It’s very much become an antithesis of itself as it’s a song about mental breakdown for R-kid and a horrible dark time and now we're on stage in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people all shouting S***house back at us.

“It’s this cathartic joyous feeling. It sums up the best case of the worst situations to a lot of people. We’ve had some crazy emotional stuff from it.”

At one gig in Bristol, the pair heard from a fan recovering from cancer treatment who told them it was the only song that “gave her a buzz,” and “that geezer who came up and said, ‘that song’s the voices in my head’.

“I think it’s connected with people a lot and it’s definitely become a bit of a cult classic.”

Joe adds while the single came relatively late during the writing process, it helped the band find a sweet spot in terms of their production and sound.

Once Big Special had recorded S***house, they looked at what else they’d done in the studio to see how it compared to their breakthrough.

The final single released in the run up to their debut, was Black Dog / White Horse.

A song described by Hicklin as the album’s “little soft curveball,” and the band’s “ballad” on an album of punkier, harder hitting songs.

Black Dog / White Horse’s accompanying video features actor Kate Dickie, known for her roles in Tinsel Town and Game Of Thrones.

Dickie saw Big Special open for Sleaford Mods in Glasgow last year and got in touch with the band.

Hicklin said: “We had an idea for the video from the guy we usually work with who does these slow motion black and white long shots.

“For Black Dog we wanted to do one of those. Kate is such a good actor, she’s so expressive and able to flip those sorts of emotions.

“Getting Kate and using her toolset is like a little metaphor for the song.

“Cal convinced me to get the courage to ask her. She was sound as a pound,”

Both add it was inspiring to see Dickie’s professionalism and willingness to be involved in their vision for the single.

Talking about the track, Moloney adds: “That song has come a long way as well.

“Joe sent me the demo back in 2020 and it was still on an acoustic guitar and very different to what it turned into in the end.

“Album wise, it’s the break point in the middle, it’s like the end of the first half.

“It’s such a poignant emotive tune, trying to find the build-up to get to it requires a bit of finesse.”

Sometimes on an album, there’s songs which could only ever act as a finale.

On Postindustrial Hometown Blues, Dig! is one of those. It’s a song described by Hicklin as their “closer to the movie,”.

It dials down the band’s thrashy sound, mixing in euphoric synths.

“Dig! is my favourite song we've written - it means a lot,” says Hicklin.

“It’s the roundup that reflects the whole sentiment of the album I think.

“On a sonic side, it's about reaching a peak, an ending, it’s taking in everything that's come in before it and just f***ing screaming and going ‘that’s it’.

“It was written as a closer, I don’t think you can have that track anywhere else.

“Lyrically there’s a theme throughout the whole album, reflecting on myself, growing up, the times, depression and becoming class aware and more politically aware, yet I think Dig! is the bit at the end of the album where there’s a bit of bitter hope.

“I don’t see it as this hopeful song that’s going ‘look guys, we’re all together,’ but saying we are in that sense together through our struggle.

“It’s a completely personal song, I'm just banging on about myself all the way through, but the point is that if I'm singing about myself, then I'm singing about you as well.

“We’re all in the same pot of s*** at the moment and especially if you're working class or lower down on the social ladder.

“It’s about me and my wife on a literal level saying, ‘It’s hard, but we’ll carry on trying to go after what we’re going after’.

“It’s s*** but we’ll carry on and I think that relates really well to me and Cal in our journey in the band and as musicians. It really means a lot to me that song.”

Asked to pick another track to discuss which hasn’t been released as a single in the last 12 months, Hicklin chooses Ill.

It was the first song Big Special put out before they were signed - but one which was subsequently purged from the internet.

Hicklin describes it as a good overview for anyone who were to ask ‘what are Big Special’ like but admits, it’s always gone somewhat under wraps.

“It’s got Cal’s favourite lyric on,” Hicklin begins, before Moloney instantly jumps in with “I’m a septic tank half-full kinda guy,” adding, “There’s a lot of tongue in-cheek-ness and that comes through on that number a bit more as well.”

As the stages and audiences get bigger, you’d be forgiven for thinking Big Special may struggle to scale up their show, performing as only a duo.

While their music features an expansive range of instrumentation, there’s no plans to alter the live experience.

For Moloney, their secret which has made Big Special “so f***ing easy,” is simply playing to each other live.

“My job on stage is to try and impress him. His job on stage is to impress me, he explains.

“We’re both just trying to one up each other, trying to make jokes funnier than the other.

“I want to see the whites of his eyes throughout the whole gig.”

Asked to pick their highlights of the last 12 months, Hicklin picks going on tour with Sleaford Mods as his, explaining the duo revitalised music for him, so to tour with them was “a dream come true,”.

Moloney adds getting Jason Williamson’s blessing was also a big thing for Big Special.

“The best review we will ever get was Jason saying - after we sent him the album - ‘not s***e’.

“You literally can't get better than that.”

For Moloney, it was Big Special’s first headline gig at Dublin Castle in December.

“Seeing a big room of people come and go, ‘yeah, we f***ing believe you and we want to hear what you have to say,’

“That was the starting point of thinking, Jesus, people are taking this seriously.”

Postindustrial Hometown Blues is released on Friday and available digitally, on CD, tape and vinyl.

Big Special headline XOYO in Digbeth on Thursday and their UK tour continues this month.

For more information, visit https://bigspecial.co.uk