Big Special

Performers

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  Big Special

  UK duo Big Special write about desperation and struggle, about a Britain in decline, about finding pride in your darkest moments, about how the real class war in the UK involves always punching downwards. They’ve developed a sound drawing disparate influences like Sleaford Mods’ bleakly hilarious bark, the intense power of Tom Waits-esque gospel, the healing power of soul and the electric charge of rock into something ecstatic, painful, truthful and real. The riotous debut album Postindustrial Hometown Blues came out in May.

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  CONSUMABLES

  Consumables are a raucous NYC-based art punk quartet with philosophical ambitions. Their debut album, Infinite Games, is colorful and exploratory, all the while remaining conceptually focused on themes of alienation and the search for control amid waves of randomness and disorder. The band is made up of Kyle Crew (vocals, guitar), Miles Fox (vocals,bass, synth) Hector Guillen (drums), and Dylan Joyce (guitar).

  Consumables are known for their explosive live performances. Crew is tall, confident, observant, like a watchtower atop a stage where everyone and everything is moving. This commanding presence translates to the album’s rollicking opening track, “Keys to the Cell”, a reflection on Crew’s six month incarceration in an Arkansas jail on pot charges. This song is raw and optimistic, reveling in possibilities and horizons. It lays down the aesthetic gauntlet for what’s to come: “screaming sirens came and went / everything’s a game of chance.” What follows is a smartly sequenced collection of thematically bound rippers pulling from post punk, synth-pop, garage, psych, and classic American indie.

  The band’s debut album is conceptually inspired by the book Finite and Infinite Gam