Music > Interviews

The Big Moon

27/09/16

London four-piece The Big Moon are a breath of fresh air in today’s often stagnant (and male dominated) indie rock scene. After a triumphant breakthrough into the spotlight last year, Juliette, Fern, Soph and Celia have supported the likes of The Maccabees, Ezra Furman and Peace, and signed to Fiction Records in March. Their live shows are always a joy, packed with bouncy guitars and infectious stage personas, which landed them slots at festivals galore over the summer. They performed alongside Mystery Jets at the Waterfront in April, where they’ll make their return this November with a headliner upstairs. We chatted with bassist Celia Archer live from the studio ahead of the show.  

What are you up to currently?

I’m in Kensal Road, East Cote Studios, where we are recording our debut album!

How’s it all going?

I don’t want to give too much away! There have been lots of 12 hour days and no days off, but it’s been so much fun and we haven’t killed each other yet. We’ve had lots of inflatables like a banana, flamingo and monkey. We found this stress ball and just hit it around to each other in this really beautiful courtyard where the studios are. It’s nice to be able to go outside when you get to the point where you’ve played a song so many times and you’re like ‘I don’t know if I can give any more’. Some of the singles will go on and other stuff we’ve already done, but the majority of the album is new stuff that we’re recording in this 12 day period.

You’ve been working with the producer Catherine Marks [Foals, Wolf Alice] too, what’s that been like?

We’ve done a couple of songs with her before – Cupid and Silent Movie Susie – and she just knows how to record us, basically, which is what you want from a producer. She really gets our live sound and authentically represents that in the recordings, which is what we want. She has lots of cool ideas and we feel comfortable enough to say ‘why don’t we do it?’ Yesterday we had a megaphone which was fun. It’s all sounding really exciting! Rock and roll man, that’s how it happens. 

You played a ton of festivals over the summer. What were some of the best bits?

Glastonbury was awesome, for obvious reasons. It was the first time I’d ever even been as a punter so to get to go and to be playing three shows and for loads of our friends to be there… I just didn’t expect it to feel as important as it did. You really feel like you’re playing Glastonbury. Latitude was amazing, I nearly cried at that show. I think I was a bit drunk and when we played Cupid everyone was singing along and I was like ‘oh my god!’ That was pretty special. Kendal Calling was beautiful as well; it’s such a beautiful part of the world and a really nice festival with a great line-up and really nice vibes.

Your music gets a lot of comparisons to Britpop, and Phil Taggart described it as ‘if Weezer covered a Phil Spector band’. Are these influences of yours?

Yeah, definitely. That’s one of the best things anyone’s ever said about us! Jules [Juliette Jackson, lead guitarist] is a huge Graham Coxon fan, as am I, and you can’t really escape all the Britpop stuff, being our age. That’s what we listened to when we were little. And we listen to The Blue Album by Weezer all the time in the van. There’s a certain stretch of road on the way back into London where we’re always listening to that record; it’s never on purpose but it always happens.

Do you pay attention to the things people say about you, in reviews for example?

Yeah, we all do. It’s nice because we’re at that point as a band where we’re quite new, so everyone says nice things, like they’re all kind of on our side a bit and want us to do well. I think in a year or so people might be a bit more critical but for now we’re still kind of underdogs, and everyone’s rooting for us which feels really lovely.

Silent Movie Susie is the current single. What’s the story behind it?

I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say! It’s not my story, it’s Jules’. In vague terms, it’s about a part of her body, that’s all I can say! It’s hilarious. I can talk about the video though [which features the hilarious day in the life of an unfortunate Barbie doll]. Mainly it happened the way it did because we sent the song to our friend Louis, who directed the Cupid and Nothing Without You videos, and he came back with this idea which we thought was fucking hilarious. And he sent us little videos of this doll he bought and just the way he moved it was so funny. When he sends us edits for videos we hardly change that much because his sense of comedic timing and rhythm are excellent. We would have done another one with us in it but we wanted to give it a break because we’ve been in all of them so far. Also it was good because it could get done whilst we were touring.

There’s a poster in the video for Trudy and the Romance, who are supporting on the headline tour. What can you tell us about them?

Rather than pick an obvious support, we asked around to see if there was any new talent we could bring on tour with us basically, and a friend suggested Trudy. I think Tarek [Musa, Spring King] produced the first couple of their singles, so there was that as well. We listened to them and it’s quite different to what’s out there at the moment and blew us away a little bit. They’re really lovely boys too – we met them at Liverpool Sound City festival.

You’re playing some shows with Spring King too, right?

Well we’re only doing a couple of dates with them, which is way less than we’d want to, but I’m really glad that it worked out. We met them just over a year ago at Secret Garden Party and we did Nothing Without You with Tarek, which was really fun. So since we met we’ve wanted to go on tour together because they’re really fucking great, and always a joy to see at any festival when we’ve had half an hour or so to hang out. It’s never really worked out timing wise but they sent us and all the other bands supporting (Kagoule, The Magic Gang and Get Inuit) an email just asking if it fitted with any of our schedules just to go out and have a mad one. I wish we could all play on the same night – what a party that would be!

What can the people of Norwich expect from The Big Moon?

Oh wow. I don’t know! There’ll be around nine songs, and they’ll all be played loud, and we’ll probably jump around quite a lot. We’ll probably have drunk quite a lot of beer and Jules will do a stupid dance, which really does make a show. There’ll be lots of songs that you can yell along to and you’ll have the best night of your life!

The Big Moon play Norwich Waterfront Studio on 2nd November. Tickets are available from ueatickets.ticketabc.com