BIG SPECIAL

BIG SPECIAL are today sharing a powerful new video for their latest single 'BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE', which stars Games of Thrones and Star Wars actor Kate Dickie. The rousing new single now gets the visuals to match it, and is the latest to be taken from their forthcoming debut album POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES, out 10th May via SO Recordings.

Speaking about starring in the video, Kate Dickie says: "Big Special's beauty and brilliance shines out in their lyrics, music and visuals, ohh I just love them. What an honour and an absolute joy to work with them on 'BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE', it's a memory I'll hold very close to my heart.

I don't say this hardly ever, but I feel good about it. We made it with such passion and commitment and fun and that is just the most special thing of all."

'BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE' showcases BIG SPECIAL at their most brooding and contemplative, walking a tightrope of deliberation as lead singer Joe Hicklin brings his stirring vocals to a song that charts the path from fear to salvation. Of the new song he says:

"BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE is about fear, about rumination, intrusive thoughts and cycles of depression. It’s about trying to figure out how to reach out when feelings of guilt and shame take hold. It’s about recognising these things in others, noticing the lost and undervalued, and their increasing numbers.

It comes from a thing I wrote years ago, about a burning snake traveling in the hot sun and a small wren flying high above it to block the heat and give it shade, taking the burden of the sun, because the little bird loves the snake and won’t see it defeated, for whatever reason."

More about BIG SPECIAL and debut album POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES

Words are not to be taken for granted. Especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage.

Words matter. History matters. People matter. And BIG SPECIAL matter.

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.

These are songs that channel that voice you hear when you look in the mirror and see your true self – fight songs for a world gone wrong.