“Never in a million fucking years,” barks Big Special frontman Joe Hicklin in a thick Black Country accent, “Did I think I’d ever see your fucking face again!” Thus begins the explosive “Shithouse,” one of the most dazzling slices of pure invective to come out of an England that seems to be producing angry (and dazzlingly articulate) young men by the dozens.
Big Special are West Midlands duo Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney, proud proles ranters and ravers dissecting the grim futility of life in that part of England that brought us the Industrial Revolution with songs that combine the blues, soul, spoken word, electronica, and rock, and are always bitingly, poetically funny.
The pair first played together more than a decade ago, but it wasn’t until Covid lockdown that they got together again and things clicked, leading to a critic-approved trio of EPs, the last of which, 2023’s “Trees,” is truly special. Big Special has since released two full-lengths (including the brand-spanking new National Average. (yes, with the period), but “Trees” is something truly extraordinary, and makes for the perfect, distilled-to-the-band’s-barking-angry-essence starting point for folks who want to suss out what all the fuss is about.
Big Special eschew the minimalism of a band they’re often compared to, the Midlands duo Sleaford Mods, preferring a wider palette, but the two bands definitely share a worldview—something’s rotten in the state of England, and the shite is definitely flowing the workingman’s way. “Trees” has it all—geezers smoking crack in the lobby, desperate breakfasts, the reek of petrol fumes, and all the futile quotidian carrying on of hopeless geezers “standing on a history of factory fodder.”
The title track opens with an electronic warble and a cry of “No Peace!” followed by the cryptic line “Another pilgrimage for trees,” and it’s all very soulful and melodic before Hicklin shuts down the melody with a rock ‘em-sock ‘em “B-b-b-b-b-b, pow!” He talks his way through the verses, and it’s all real-life bleak. He turns down an offer to buy cheap sunglasses (“I’m alright, mate”/If it were only sunny/You could charge a higher rate/But he didn’t find it funny”), boards the bus with “one hand on the weed and one hand on the money” because drugs are the “one reason that he’s earning,” keeps his eyes glued to his phone “Scrolling past the shell shock and the floods/Bad news goes around like blood,” and round it goes with no way out until the song explodes and Hicklin shuts things down with a shouted “No peace no peace!”
“Desperate Breakfast” is the Englishman’s naked lunch—what you see at the end of the fork is the spirit-killing daily again and again for nothing that leads Hicklin, towards the end of the song, to snarl sarcastically, “It’s character building! It’s character building!” The song opens with a very bad rooster wake-up call, after which Hicklin comes in sounding very slick and soulful, singing,
“Prop me up in a greasy spoon
Under an English summer pale moon
Another desperate breakfast (Out of the)
Out of the rains of June.”
He makes a nice play on words when he sings, “I toast my tea in mourning/For a morning come too soon,” then the drums and bass kick in as he snarls,
“The sheep sing on the death wagon as we pass on Butcher’s Road
And I heard the song from the bus stop that rang out just as cold
All beasts in ones and twos come limping from their dens
The birds feign the joy of music and mock us from the bushes once again
Ha-ha-ha, oh-oh-oh.”
You’re not going to find lyrics bleaker than that, why they’re practically Blakean, and things only get darker in the second verse, on which Hicklin says:
“Alas another inevitable bastard
To emerge out of the gilding
Your bit-part has been cast
And you should put up and shut up.”
Because, as he noted above, it’s character building, innit? Right. And by this time, Hicklin’s gone stark raving, and there’s nothing soulful about the final chorus—he’s hysterically screaming.
“This Here Ain’t Water” is all about not getting what you need because they won’t give it to you. Hicklin comes on as a blues shouter from the very start, doing his thing over a slow beat, then he starts talking, and it’s all rain and more rain and “The sun couldn’t get out of bed/We didn’t see her for weeks” and whatever they’re trying to pass off as water is something that weighs nothing but will keep you in your place:
“Just another cup of something
Another man painted by his curse
This here ain’t water, son
And nor does it weigh anything
And it will always pull you closer to the earth.”
And the only thing more powerful than when he sings, “When everyone you know is thirsty/What am I to drink?” is the moment towards the end when he asks, bitterly, “Has anything ever changed? Ever, at all?” And did I say blues “shouter”? Make that blues screamer.
“Shithouse” is made of brick and smacks you right upside the head, from that opening cry to the following “I thought I was getting better/I must think I’m fucking Mickey Mouse!/This year’s been a belter/Shithouse!” A pummeling rhythm kicks the song along, and Hicklin is all bile, vitriol, and poison, and the only spoken words that beat
“Here’s a lighter love
And another cuppa tea for your perils
You’ll be running the rails
Man is death’s dog
You’ll spend your life nipping at his coattails
And barking at the fog”
come when he sneers, “You can’t shine in shit, kid/And life ain’t no fucking disco.” “Shithouse” is the most in-your-face slice of remorseless noise and rancor I’ve heard all year, and Hicklin’s vocal performance is a thing of ugly beauty.
Big Special has Big Competition in the England’s Voice of the Oppressed Department, but at this moment in time they’re damn near the top of the pack, in large part because Hicklin can both outshout and outsmart the competition. But Big Special also has a surprising knack for writing catchy melodies—I hear some Eno-era David Bowie in “Shithouse,” and it’s special indeed. Micklin may indeed be fucking Mickey Mouse, but if so he’s a cartoon mouse that roars.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
