BIG SPECIAL have announced their headline tour for this coming winter, hot off the band of their new EP, O’JOY!, out via SO Recordings, alongside a new video for closing track “HOTEL”.
The ten-track collection arrives following the singles “ONLY FREE WHEN SLEEPING”, “PLAINTIVE NATIVE”, “SLUGLIFE”, and “DRAGGED UP A HILL (and thrown down the other side)”, completing a project the Black Country duo have described as “the fallen parts” of their first two records – reworked, reshaped and given a life of their own.
Comprised of vocalist Joe Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney, BIG SPECIAL have spent the last few years building a reputation as one of the UK’s most vital new bands; channeling working-class frustration, dark humour, tenderness and fury into songs that feel both deeply personal and painfully communal. O’JOY! continues that trajectory while pushing further into the shadows, gathering together songs that didn’t previously fit within the emotional architecture of their albums but still demanded their own space.
Released alongside the EP is the animated video for “HOTEL”, a bruised and bleary-eyed closer that captures BIG SPECIAL at their most reflective and emotionally exposed. Equal parts resignation and release, the track drifts through exhaustion, isolation and the strange intimacy of temporary places, ending O’JOY! not with resolution, but with acceptance.
Before their headline tour, BIG SPECIAL play a run of festivals and live dates throughout the summer, including TRNSMT, Boomtown, Beautiful Days and Moseley Folk Festival, with more shows to be announced soon. They will also be touring North America this Autumn with headline shows as well as dates as special guests of Lambrini Girls. Tickets are available here.
June 12th: Bradninch Music Festival, Devon, UK
June 20th: TRNSMT Festival, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
July 13th: James Borrer Tribute Concert, O2 Indigo, London, UK
July 31st: Valley Fest, Chew Magna, Bristol, UK
August 14th: Boomtown Festival, Hampshire, UK
August 22nd: Beautiful Days Festival, Devon, UK
August 30th: Dreamland, Margate, UK (w/ Babyshambles)
September 4th: Moseley Folk Festival, Birmingham, UK
WINTER HEADLINE TOUR
November 24th Stoke Sugarmill
November 25th Cardiff Tramshed
November 26th Liverpool Arts Club
November 27th Hull Polar Bear
November 29th Edinburgh Liquid Rooms
November 30th Scunthorpe Cafe Indie
December 1st Blackpool Bootleg Special
December 2nd Hebden Bridge Trades Club
December 3rd Sheffield Crookes Social Club
December 5th Coventry Kasbah
December 6th Milton Keynes Craufurd Arms
December 8th Oxford Bullingdon
December 9th Brighton Chalk
December 10th Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
December 11th Exeter Cavern Club
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