FEATURE:
Revisiting…
The Big Moon - Walking Like We Do
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BACK in October…
The Big Moon released their third studio album, Here Is Everything. The London band comprise Juliette Jackson, Soph Nathan, Celia Archer and Fern Ford. They are going to play the Radio 6 Music Festival next month. It seems like a perfect moment to think about the amazing group. In 2017, they released their Mercury Prize-nominated album, Love in the 4th Dimension. It was a remarkable start from The Big Moon. I am going to spend some time with their second studio album. Released on 10th January, 2020, Walking Like We Do is one that I think everyone should hear. Released not too long before the pandemic shut everything down, it was perhaps not an ideal time to put out such an important album. Maybe not as revered as their debut, Walking Like We Do is a wonderful work from The Big Moon. There is not a lot of promotion around the 2020 album. That is understandable. Before getting to reviews of Walking Like We Do, there is an interview from HUCK. It is wonderful finding out more about The Big Moon and their brilliant second studio album, Walking Like We Do:
“The Big Moon formed in 2014 after Jackson posted a call-out on Facebook in search of instrumentalists to help her execute a budding songwriting vision. The call-to-arms worked: soon after coming together, the group began hitting a stride, combining ’00s-style indie with Jack Antonoff-ed hooks and production. It was a sleek guitar band sound as indebted to Taylor Swift as it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The quartet burst into wider prominence in 2017 with their debut album, Love in the 4th Dimension, which earned them a place on the Mercury Prize shortlist. Thematically, the album was interesting with the metaphysical: infatuation dragging you headfirst into the unknown. This time around, though, Walking Like We Do’s songs offer a liveliness only this plane can. Optimistic, danceable pop rock shot through in flashes of modern anxiety and heartbreak, where keyboard chords have mostly replaced the grungey guitars.
And where does the album title come from?
JJ: It’s a lyric from the song, ‘A Hundred Ways to Land’. It just summed up the whole feeling of the album, which is about growing up and moving on and going forward. But also about trying to feel strong when everything in the world feels quite unsteady.
One recent quote that jumped out at me was from Juliette, regarding the daily political madness. You said, ‘Has [it] always been happening or have I just grown up and started noticing it happening?’ Why do you think you’ve not been able to answer that question?
JJ: It feels like things are bad at the moment, and it’s really scary. But, for example, my dad – after we released ‘Your Light’ – he came up to me and hadn’t heard it before. He was like, ‘Things have been bad before, Juliette.‘ And I was like, ‘But you don’t know, Dad!’ – being a bit of a teenager. It is true: things have been really bad before and people worked things out and things got better, then worse, then better again. I’m not saying that we should forget about everything, that it will be fine. But there is a history of things that change.
So do you think younger generations are slightly exaggerating the doom and gloom?
FF: Sometimes I think everything will be fine. But I think a lot of the doom nowadays comes from things that are just so much bigger than people, as a result of people – like the climate. The thing everyone is worried about is the existence of our species. How do you even soften that feeling?
CA: When you’re a kid at school and something bad happens, like your friend you’ve been best friends with your whole life doesn’t want to talk to you one day, that is the end of your world. Even though the whole life you’ve known this kid is only like three years – and this is nothing in the grand scheme of things – but that’s what is real to you. That’s your whole experience. It doesn’t even have to be that the actual world is ending. Which it is.
JJ: Things only get better because people are worried about them and do things about them. You have to feel that urgency.
Would you consider yourselves a political band? Do you think it’s even possible to be an apolitical band in a world guided and shaped by politics?
JJ: The world is political. Or even choosing to write a happy song that’s not about what’s going on in the world. Trying to find a way of being hopeful is still political. Putting out a pop song to distract from it all is political. If you read the news, you can’t help but have that stuff in your brain, even if you wanna write a love song. It comes in the context of everything”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana
Released through the Fiction label, Walking Like We Do received mostly positive reviews. It would lead to the more introspective and rawer Here Is Everything (in a large part because of Juliette Jackson becoming a mother). If you have not experienced The Big Moon’s second album, then I would advise you spend some time with it. This is what CLASH wrote in their review:
“‘Walking Like We Do’ presents a sense of musical fearlessness from The Big Moon. Lyrically defined and musically characteristic, it is an emotionally provocative, empowering listening experience.
There is a sense of ambition from the outset. ‘It’s Easy Then’ is as hypnotic as it is melodic. Drum and piano chime in unison as Juliette Jackson’s instantly recognisable vocals are reintroduced. Pointed and (darker), it represents the band’s musical evolution. If 'Love in the 4th Dimension' was a collection of joyous love songs then their second outing is far more of an emotive passage.
Take ‘Dog Eat Dog’ for example. Clever imagery emphasises a sense of youthful disengagement. The top down hierarchy of capitalism is defined as: “It’s more like pigeon eating fried chicken on the street,” which might just be one of music’s greatest similes. In spite of this, the London based band have captured the reality of societal injustice proficiently. They suggest that urban life is isolating, that one’s actions are inconsequential in the grand scheme of reality.
'Walking Like We Do' is both mature and reflective. There is less of a reliance on grunge-inspired guitar and joyous harmonies. Piano and keyboard instead lead an album conceived through years of touring experience. 'Love in the 4th Dimension' was a Mercury Prize nominated album, for good reason. With this comes expectation to deliver again, but The Big Moon refuse to stand still. As Jackson has said of the project: “While we still wanted it to have energy and all the right feelings, we just wanted to be more creative with how you conjure a mood.”
This collection of songs take far deeper meaning. They constantly reference life’s relentlessness. ‘Why’ questions the longevity of love. From the early perfections of a relationship’s honeymoon period comes uncertainty and crossroads. ‘Waves’ builds on this, with its reflective air and exceptional lyricism. How does one react to the collapse of eternal love? In many ways, tracks such as these act as the thematic antithesis to fan favourites such as ‘Sucker’ and ‘Cupid.’
However, in such uncertainty comes release. There is an overbearing sense of hope and empowerment throughout the album. ‘Holy Roller’ traverses the negatives of modern life (porno sites, contour kits, payday loans, etc), its chorus offers joy in the face of emptiness. ‘A Hundred Ways To Land’ is the album’s greatest act of resilience. “When the leaves drop down It doesn’t mean the trees are dead” will echo through a listeners mind with every listen. It is this unparalleled hopefulness which will define the album in years to come.
In thirty years time we will look back at Walking Like We Do as a true reflection of youth in the 2020s. By considering themes such as love, social injustice and all round perseverance, it is both mature and engaging. The Big Moon are constantly breathing new life into a genre which sometimes runs stale. For that we should be eternally grateful.
8/10”.
I will finish off with NME’s assessment of the amazing Walking Like We Do. This was the sound of a group building on their award-nominated debut album and adding new dimensions and layers. It still sounds incredible several years after its release:
“How could The Big Moon followed up their 2017 Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut ‘Love in a 4th Dimension’? The band’s chief songwriter Jules Jackson said in a recent interview that she planned on penning “the same kind of rock songs” again – and had made the first steps to do so. But plaudits and a fiercely loyal fanbase emboldened Jackson to experiment for album number two. “I’ve been trying to push myself to find ways to make songs feel great without going to clichés,” she later told NME. “We wanted to explore our extremes.”
As well as exploring pastures new, ‘Walking Like We Do’ features enough of the grit and gall of its predecessor. Where ‘Love in a 4th Dimension’’s indie-rock songs saw the London band stick two fingers up at “guitar-music-is-dead” bores, their new record is an embrace of evolution. Squalling guitar licks remain, as do their multi-part harmonies, but keys and synths now open the majority of songs. New, looser spaces are filled by flute and brass. Lyrics have a broader, outward gaze.
‘It’s Easy Then’, the album’s lead single released last August, was the harbinger of this fresh sound and remains one of the album’s strongest tracks. Piano, call-and-response vocals and a gloopy synth line congeal for an oddly anthemic ode to life as “one big panic attack”. “Just keep on breathing in / I’m breathing out / Swear the air is thicker than / It used to be,” sings Jackson with Soph Nathan (lead guitar), Celia Archer (bass) and Fern Ford (drums) in tow.
Elsewhere, ‘Dog Eat Dog’ sees Jackson ruminate on the rat race world we inhabit, resulting in the album’s funniest lyrics: “They say it’s like dog eat dog but / It’s more like pigeon eaten fried chicken on the street”. An operatic vibrato sample haunts the song, cooing beside rattling drums and spectral organ chords. ‘Why’ opens as a seaside jaunt but becomes a tale of heartbreak, its piano notes punctured by Nathan’s growling guitar and unnerving stabs of arcade synths.
‘Walking Like We Do’ falters in its second half, which offers fewer creative and catchy bangers (‘ADHD’, ‘Holy Roller’ and the half-cooked ‘Take A Piece’ all underwhelm). ‘Barcelona’, thankfully, comes into its own at the end with heady layers of guitar, flute and a choral refrain about the perils of growing older.
But it’s ‘Your Light’, which advocates letting go from your troubles, that hints at an even brighter future for this London bunch. It’s the apex of The Big Moon old and new: zippy guitars and knotted harmonies meet electronic whirrs and propulsive, disco-lite beats. They’ve certainly made interesting, bolder leaps than before with this second record. We’re ready to jump in again”.
As The Big Moon put out their third studio album last year and are heading to the Radio 6 Music Festival next month, I was eager to revisit their second album. It is one that does not get as much airtime and spotlight as it should. Take some time out to listen to an album that is…
FULL of gold.