🎧Approved: BIG SPECIAL

If you’ve not yet had the pleasure of being yelled at - poetically, cathartically - by Walsall duo BIG SPECIAL, now is the time. Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney have spent the last two years turning post-industrial malaise into something close to gospel, trading in thunderous drums, spoken-word sermons and a humour so black it practically glows.

Their appeal lies in that tension, rage and empathy, bleakness and humour. Two years in, they’ve already carved a space between the social realism of Sleaford Mods and the bruised tenderness of IDLES, but their particular brand of poetry feels older, rougher and a little more haunted.

Fresh from the surprise drop of their second album ‘National Average’, the pair are back with a new single, ‘Plaintive Native’. Landing somewhere between working-class blues and post-punk sermon, it condenses the chaos of modern Britain. 

It’s a song about confusion and conviction, about trying to be good when everything feels irredeemably bad. As Hicklin puts it, “political turmoil clouding the minds of the nation that turns moral conviction into apathy”.

Hicklin’s voice, steeped in Black Country grit, anchors the track’s existential thunder. Moloney’s percussion, meanwhile, turns the sermon into something enlivening. 

🎧 Watch the video for ‘Plaintive Native’ below