Big Special announce debut album and share brutal new single ‘Dust Off / Start Again’

Big Special have announced plans to release their debut album ‘Postindustrial Hometown Blues’ and shared new single ‘Dust Off/Start Again’.

• READ MORE: Big Special make vulnerable, soulful punk that needs to be heard

The duo’s LP is set for release on May 10 via SO Recordings and can be pre-ordered here.

Speaking about their new single, which you can listen to below, lead singer Joe Hicklin said: “‘Dust Off / Start Again’ is a bolt of cursed vomit, spewed into a stewpot of English class issues regarding housing, ownership, mental illness, appropriation and human rights.

“It’s about the disregard for the common man and how it is expected of anyone, regardless of their situation, to carry on, struggle through and go to work. It’s about how the privileged and powerful attempt to define, debate and justify the social positions of all whilst the ideals of our governing systems are pressed upon the working-class youth, so that they quietly accept their role as a commodity and place blame on each other, as they wave the flag that keeps them down.”

Speaking about their new album, Hicklin said it is a record “about depression”.

He added: “It’s about the different shapes it takes; personal, social, generational… and it’s about coming face to face with those ghosts and what we do or how we feel when that happens.

“The album offers no answers, it is just an honest expression of a working-class experience in modern England through the eyes of ill mental health, a pursuit of art and political disenchantment; a story of rumination, realisation and reaction.”

Speaking to NME back in September, Big Special discussed the politics of the band as being “on the side of the people”.

“I don’t want to sound like a dickhead or like we’re above our station, but we’re just on the side of the people. All of the music comes from a personal place and is about experience and everything around it,” said Hicklin. “Obviously I fucking hate the Tories, I fucking hate Keir Starmer, it’s all against the people. There is nothing there looking to look after the people. The working class might as well be completely fucking invisible. It’s all wank.”

He continued: “I just wish it would all burn down so we could start again. At least it would be different. Every day there’s less and less hope to seek, and it breeds either ignorance, confusion or hatred.”

Meanwhile, the duo are set to hit the road for a series of UK and Ireland tour dates which kick off at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff on April 3 before wrapping at Ulster Sports Bar in Belfast on May 22.

Tickets are on sale now for all the dates which you can view below and can be purchased here.

Big Special will play:

APRIL

3 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff

4 – Bullingdon, Oxford

5 – Yellow Arch Studio, Sheffield

6 – Green Door Store, Brighton

7 – Joiners, Southampton

MAY

7 – District, Liverpool

8 – The Key Club, Leeds

9 – XOYO, Birmingham

10 – King Tuts, Glasgow

12 – Strange Brew, Bristol

16 – Jazz Café, London

17 – Horatio’s, Brighton (The Great Escape 2024)

18 – Deaf Institute, Manchester

20 – Kasbah Club, Limerick

21 – Workman’s Cellar, Dublin

22 – Ulster Sports Bar, Belfast