BIG SPECIAL have released a new single, ‘BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE’.
It’s the latest cut from their recently-announced debut album, ‘POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES’. The full-length is set for release on 10th May via SO Recordings, and has already been teased by singles including ‘BUTCHER’S BIN’ and ‘DUST OFF / START AGAIN’.
Lead singer Joe Hicklin explains: “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.”
Of the album, he adds: “POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES is an album about depression. 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.
“POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES is about learning that we are connected by our common struggles and though dark and rageful, the album holds a quiet sentiment of love and hope. It’s about laughing at the face of the void, recognising its oppressive weight, holding hands and moving forward.”
Check out the new single below; the album’s full tracklisting reads:
- BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC
- I MOCK JOGGERS
- DESPERATE BREAKFAST
- SHITHOUSE
- THIS HERE AIN’T WATER
- MY SHAPE (BLOCKING THE LIGHT)
- BLACK DOG / WHITE HORSE
- BROADCAST: TIME AWAY
- iLL.
- MONGREL
- BUTCHER’S BIN
- DUST OFF / START AGAIN
- TREES
- FOR THE BIRDS
- DiG!
