Today, BIG SPECIAL are sharing a brand-new single, “Desperate Breakfast”, a marriage of bludgeoning percussion and buzzsaw synths that lays out the next chapter of a band manifesto that – only three singles deep – is already making converts of many. The follow-up to this summer’s “This Here Ain’t Water” – which landed on the BBC 6 Music A-list – “Desperate Breakfast” kicks against the mocking “put up and shut up” mentality that broadcasts itself under the guise of being “character building.”
The way singer Joe Hicklin’s brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, is a form of alchemy that only he knows how to conjure. It’s an approach siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. Hicklin’s magnetic presence on the track walks us through a vision of dilapidated smalltown high streets, capturing the exasperation of living pay cheque to pay cheque.
Hicklin comments on the song: “’Desperate Breakfast’ is about that first meal of the day you have to force down before you drag yourself to the job you don’t want in the place you don’t want to be, and the normality of having no choice but to take part In that seemingly infinite routine. It is also in part about the similar cycle that occurs in unemployment. Either way, the morning brings desperation.”
Continuing about the video, he says: “Tat Vision is a household name in Brum, we love his work, it’s spookiness, the mixture of humour and pain in those faces. We’re chuffed he was up for collaborating with us.”
