“It Needs To Be Better!” The Big Moon Are Writing Their New Chapter
The Big Moon have been a rising force on the indie scene since the release of their debut record ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’ back in 2017. Second record ‘Walking Like We Do’ saw them add a poppier tinge to their sound, and it was released in January 2020 – alas, the pandemic meant the group was unable to tour their record until now.
The tour for that record coincides with the release of their latest record, the spellbinding ‘Here Is Everything’. The Big Moon’s Juliette Jackson and Celia Archer sat down to discuss their latest record in more detail; Juliette opened up on the influence motherhood had on the new record and some of the sonic inspirations behind it. The duo also discussed booking their largest shows to date in 2023 at London’s historic Roundhouse, and making their recent debut on Later… With Jools Holland.
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How did you find your Jools Holland debut?
Celia: It was so fun. You always think those things are gonna be really stressful. I mean, I don’t know how you felt about it… but it ended up being really fun! There’s so few things that you get to do with other people in the music industry because you’re always on tour on your own. So it’s really nice to be in a room with other musician, doing something fun that everyone’s really excited to do. It’s such a big deal. And it just feels like a party. You’re like, I’m here with Burna Boy!
How have you found touring the last record? The album obviously came out in January 2020.
Juliette: Yeah, it was January 2020. Touring has been amazing. We’ve played some songs from the new record – the tour we’ve just done was actually meant to be in 2020. It was delayed and delayed and delayed! So we’re playing a lot of songs from our last album as well. But it just felt really good to go on tour again and do what we do with our fans and be in big rooms and just make loud noises together. I think we’ve been yearning for it for such a long time. And it just felt really good when it happened.
Now we’re playing at Roundhouse next year – probably our biggest show ever. So that’s exciting.
How are you feeling about that in advance?
Juliette: It’s exciting. I’ve been to see other bands there and now it’s us playing there.
Celia: As Jules said, like, the last tour… was sort of for the last album. And so the Roundhouse show – and whatever we end up doing around it – will be this album. I’m just excited to announce our performance, and to play those songs. Because you don’t want to spend too much time playing new songs people don’t know on tour.
Has it been odd touring an album that came out so long ago?
Juliette: No, it doesn’t feel weird while you’re doing it. It just feels great. And exciting. And like something that was meant to happen!
Celia: Yeah. And because that tour, it was postponed so many times. Many people have tickets from when we first put them on sale. We were all waiting together for this tour, so it was really nice to be with those people, playing those songs and giving that album a little bit of what it deserved.
You recorded some of this record and came back to it after six months, how did you find that ?
Juliette: I wouldn’t call it seamless. The whole journey of making this album was complicated, because the pandemic was happening. I had a baby in the middle of it. So there was a lot going on. We recorded it and we thought it was done. But then we listened back and realised it was not done at all… but it was like a good starting point. Then we took a break. I had the baby then wrote some more songs and we came back to it and worked on it in Fern’s studio – she built a studio in her house during lockdown, and taught herself how to do production properly. So we all kind of huddled together in Fern’s house with the baby and opened the box and gave ourselves loads of time and space to turn it into what we knew it could be. It was a journey!
Celia: I guess what was seamless or what was easy was that – once we started – we all knew what the gaps were, what sort of thing we needed to make in order to fill it. We were all on the same page. We knew how to fix it. It just so much work… Fern is still recovering. When she listens to the album, she just sees the session… the whole thing!
Juliette: It’s physically a lot of work… but also emotionally so much work. Because we just really wanted it to be as good as it could be.
Celia: There’s always people around you who say it sounds really good. And you’re like: oh no, it’s not! You know, we’re never pleased with anything that we do. It can always be better and it needs to be better. Now, we’re all so happy with it all and we’re listening to it all the time. I’m not nervous about any reviews, or how well it does… because you just feel satisfied with it as a body of work.
Obviously, it was quite a personal record in terms of your experiences. But were there any artists you’d listened to in the build up to it that particularly influenced the sound?
Juliette: I wasn’t really listening to that much music at the time, I was a lot more interested in reading or, like, thinking about words and phrases before I started writing. I know I wanted to write songs that were really simple. Just like structurally, three chords, four chords… songs that didn’t throw you around too much. I wanted it to feel driving, and constant. And reassuring. I mean, I was listening to lots of country music in lockdown…!
Celia: Storytelling. It’s that thing about driving and consistency. A feeling of someone just kind of talking to you in a song.
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How have you found this mini record store which you’ve just kicked off?
Juliette: So we’ve done one so far. It’s been great.
Celia: I’m really excited to meet people and just find out where our music goes. As makers, how do you know where it’s living out there in the world and who wants it?
Because when you release it – if we didn’t do this – it would just sort of like be uploaded into the ether. I guess we thought it would be nice to just go and look people in the eye and say, thank you for buying my record! They’re all ages shows as well, and it’s so nice to see young girls at the shows.
Juliette: This album is about my family and being a parent and it’s really cool that parents can come to the shows, too.
Celia: Yeah, it’s really nice. We’ve had a few people already saying, I am starting a record collection for my daughter so I’m gonna buy this record. I mean, that’s really nice. It’s more than we could have hoped for when we made this album. It’s just amazing.
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How important for you is it to keep evolving your sound?
Juliette: I never really think of it as staying relevant. But I think of it as improving, or honing your skills. As a band, we’ve been together eight years now… and we know what we’re really good at. And we know what everyone in the band is really good at. And knowing all of that stuff means that when I’m writing, I can write a song and bring it to the band in a much more skeletal state and imagine how everyone can fill it all in.
All that just comes with time. We just get better at it, I think. I would never sit down and write a song and think, right, it’s time to write a techno album….! (laughs) Change, we must change! I just can’t think like that. You don’t really know where songs come from. You just sort of write them… and they are what they are.
Celia: Jules is quite a broad songwriter, I think. There’s different styles within each album, as well as different styles on the album overall, but it’s cohesive. When she sends a demo, I never know what it’s going to be. We just write how it is, and work from where we’re at. The next album will be something different. We’ll have unknowingly been listening to different things, or playing different kinds of music with other people and then come back together. It’s all like this musical food that you eat and then it just comes out. It metabolises into a feeling.
Is there anything else you’d like to cover off about this new record?
Celia: I’m really glad the whole thing is out there now. Lyrically, it’s some of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard. I love Jules as a lyricist. I’m really excited for people to hear all of this. I’m excited for people to really get their teeth into this, and hear the whole picture.
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‘Here Is Everything’ is out now. Find The Big Moon tour dates on their site.
Words: Chris Connor
