NATIONAL AVERAGE. Big Special

And Big Special has done it again. When I received a listening link, I dutifully took a listen on my earplugs and, just like with debut album 'Postindustrial Hometown Blues', I made head nor tails of the album. Some time later the cd dropped on my doormat and of course I dutifully gave it one spin. A few hours later I played in the car and was sold, again.

You have music that sounds best on a headphone, the music of Big Special certainly is no part of that set of music. The music on NATIONAL AVERAGE (last time in capitals) is aggressive, totally in your face and demands you to be paying attention the whole of the time. As soon as I want to do something different than listening, Big Special's delivery becomes highly distracting and then irritating.

Big Special is very different from most music I listen to. What may come closest is Red Hot Chili Peppers in the way singer-talker Joe Hicklin moves between talking, rapping and singing. RHCP got ever smoother over the years. Big Special is still young. National Average is its second album in two years. The surprise of liking 'Postindustrial Hometown Blues' and Big Special has worn off of course. The appreciation of this new music has not. The new album is certainly as raw as the debut album.

Listening to National Average does make me wonder how the duo will ever reproduce the huge sound as a duo on stage. Besides the drumming of Callum Moloney, you will hear many different instruments. All sorts of keyboards, a bass, guitars, the total is huge. I do hear a little of how G. Love & Special Sauce stepped into the musical universe about 30 years ago. If I had to choose between the two though, Big Special is the real thing. In my previous review I mentioned Ray Davies of The Kinks. I do so again, as Joe Hicklin has the same sort of societal observations in his lyrics, but all romance has been left out and just the rough side of life remaining. No Waterloo Sunset today. A 'Dead End Street? Multiple variations on that topic for sure.

All music, production, etc., was created by the duo with Michael Clarke, with the exception of a saxophone and female voice. The result is a full band sound in most songs. Almost all extremely exciting, not in the least because of the vocal delivery of Joe Hicklin. In the more relaxed songs, all is relative as ever, Hicklin is the centre point of what is going on behind him. Even in a rather weird experiment like 'Pigs Puddin', he's there as Big Special's front runner.

No matter how far Big Special is removed from my daily musical digest, this band is the real thing. It is authentic and that is what shines through National Average (and 'Postindustrial Hometown Blues') no little. If three words cap it off, it is rock and roll. Okay, for the third decade of the 21st century.

Wout de Natris - van der Borght