Birmingham’s Big Image, with Shaun Ryder’s glint in their eye, strode onto the Nambucca stage last Saturday for This Feeling’s ‘Big In 2020’ night. Dressed, resplendently as casuals, they hit up north London with undeniable grooves and uniting anthems.
There are some nights when a great DJ (Jon Mancini / Eddy TM / Mike Pickering) can move a room to a state of bliss. Rarely, can a band do this. The Mondays, The Roses, and occasionally, Kasabian have. Now, Big Image are approaching that territory.
With their lasers set to groove, ‘Separate Beat’ and ‘Weigh Me Down’ takes a stomp around Chicago via Manchester circa ’91. Meanwhile, the underrated euphoria of Mark Day’s guitars shone on ‘The Middle’ and Weigh Me Down’.
Then, as they’d worked the sold-out crowd into a Ryder meets Brown dance craze, they play ‘Uptown’. Like the aforementioned DJs, they drop this like an almighty ecstatic release. The shimmering genius of ‘Kinky Afro’ loiters on this sun-kissed classic. The weather, politics, and, all strife, just dissipated into the ether as the dreamy guitars floated among the cosmos.
They have the look, they have the substance and crucially, they have the songs. Brace yourselves 2020.
*Image courtesy of Jon Mo