Big Image: This Feeling, Truck Festival

The Midlands four-piece Big Image recently played This Feeling’s stage at Truck Festival. With XFM/Radio X icon John Kennedy announcing their debut album has been recorded, the crowd’s anticipation grew. Did they deliver? Images courtesy of Alan Wells

On paper, 30mins seems such a short slot. However, some can make me feel longer. Not Big Image! Blink and you would have missed their set of baggy meets Balearic anthems. ‘Late Nights’ fired out of the traps like an Ibiza classic fronted by indie icon.

Images courtesy of Alan Wells

Former single ‘Uptown’ breezed through the cool air with its blessed reverb, shimmering Mark Day licks, whilst frontman George held the crowd in the palm of his hand. On ‘Something’, they took the set to another level. The piano riff and beats induced the warmest glow of the weekend. Their talent is evident but, it's their heart which carried them to greatness. Like The Clash, Happy Mondays, and The Libertines, Big Image have an innate ability to make their audiences be a part of their immortality. Their humble star power continuously resonated with the Truck crowd.

Taking their set to a more destructive place was ‘Club’. The booming licks combined with the funk of ‘Bummed’ are dragged into the warped intensity of The Charlatans ‘Area 51’. The crowd which, moments before were bouncing at the band's behest now stood in awe as a moment of profound adulation materialised.

Roll on the debut album!

Big Image: Nambucca, London

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

Big Image - Uptown

Birmingham’s Big Image have been threatening peak Happy Mondays and The Twang on their previous offerings, now, they have hit that groove and begun to stride beyond on ‘Uptown’.

Sun-kissed and begging for your best Ian Brown march on the dancefloor, it’s going to leave you in a heap the morning after. The irony is, this is a tale of leaving those debauched nights behind you.

That said, such is the beauty of the shimmering jangle guitars, a love affair of guitars searching for Balearic escapism comes to the fore once more. It’s taken the lo-fi pop hooks of Ian Brown’s ‘First World Problems’ and funnelled them through the everyman swagger of The Twang to produce a breakthrough moment for the band. This feels like the moment the influences become theirs to play with as their own sound becomes dominant.

*Image courtesy of Luke Jones