Big Special give us a track by track rundown of their surprise new album ‘National Average’

Surprise! Big Special have returned with new album National Average and they’re here to give Rolling Stone UK an exclusive track-by-track rundown of the entire record.

It’s the follow-up to 2024’s acclaimed Postindustrial Hometown Blues and sees the Midlands duo offering up their state-of-the-nation punk with a mood that flits between positivity and – as shown on the opening track – darker moments too.

But that’s enough from us whittling on. Over to Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney for more…

‘THE MESS’

The dark entrance to the album. If this album was a movie sequel, it’s the voice that moved forward with hope from DiG! To find himself in a drudge of self reflection, finding that hope, so far, has not saved him. The thump of the song depicting the dragging feet of disappointment and shame as we keep moving forward. When we realise all that makes us unique is what makes us broken in a life where being unique is only a strain on the self and systems that govern an average life.

This is probably the oldest song on this album. Only one of a couple on the album where we worked from a demo rather than jamming and writing in the studio.

‘GOD SAVE THE PONY’

A goodnight and good luck to the weight that everyone drags behind them. We are the tired horses dragging a personal load and often the weight of another’s. It’s about how our cargo has changed shape, and how we learn and grow with our struggles and with ourselves and outwardly in to our life and times and how we change shape with our frustrations. We don’t ever plan what to play when we are jamming in the studio, and we surprised ourselves with how funky this one came out. The funk came to save us in this bop of strain and frustration.

‘HUG A BASTARD’

It’s about coming face to face with yourself, learning who you are when everything changes. It’s from a moment of shrugging your shoulders at yourself and accepting, you wont always be who you want to be, you wont always act in accordance with your ideals. Ultimately it’s about letting these things happen and floating through, you gotta get to where you gotta get and sometime you have to turn the cheek on yourself and accept you are a fucking messy meat lump, crawling up a hill or falling down one. You want sex and money and time and space, but you want peace and happiness and for those you care about to flourish. But none of it makes sense, you don’t make sense. But times are hard. It don’t need to make sense right now. This one came from the first jam in the studio, we just vibed on that bass line and drum beat for a long time, it was a great feeling to be in a room together again plugging in and letting it all fall out.

‘SHOP MUSIC’

It’s about a mind set. It’s not an attack on those who want to make some money, it’s more of a reflection on the idea of not doing anything without getting paid for it and how that can turn into doing anything for a pay day. It’s about trying to find a way to live in a system that isn’t artful or empathetic by being artful and empathetic. You have to make your way and make your money, but it’s about how that eternal mission can cloud the motivations that made you want to be an artist or your personal understanding of why art even exists and the dichotomy of art and industry and how industry is a blind and deaf, heartless hound the same as any other. The irony does not escape us as we try to sell you this album. It’s about the easy drift into the subconscious thought that human life equals capitalism. Profit at all costs, even the cost of your humanity. This is how people end up justifying their role in facilitating genocide in Palestine.

‘PIGS PUDDIN’

It’s batshit mental and I worry about where I was with myself when it was written. I tried to make a sausage metaphor about generational trauma on a personal and social class level, the blood of experience being boiled down into a phallic consumable meat product. So yeah, that’s that one.

‘PROFESSIONALS’

It’s about making your own way despite the powers that be, but also about achievement not fixing all your problems. It’s about finding some confidence in being out and about doing our thing, beating out our own path, but feeling like an imposter now our art is part of an industry and a business world that we have no clue about. It’s about a shift in identity.

‘GET BACK SAFE’

It’s about my brother becoming a dad and how that made me look at the social expectations of young working class parents, and the pressure he was taking on as an act of love. The song became a reflection on fathers and sons from my experience; responsibility in general and how close fear and love can exist and persist.

‘YESBOSS’

This song is about jobs and how shit they are, how hard they are to maintain and get and keep whilst going through a bad time of life. It’s about the constant persistence of doing what you don’t want to do, just to get by, and still not being valued as a person, forever. All you are is a task that has been completed or that has not. All work is hard work, having a boss is always degrading and we’ve been in the muck with the best of them.

‘DOMESTIC BLISS’

It’s about being down with your situation, trying to get to a point where you can see more in yourself and your life and that point moving further away each time you approach it. It’s about being hidden and depressed within a perfect picture. It’s about how you will be judged regardless of your intentions and your attempts to change will be scrutinised. But there’s a funky bass-line, so there’s a bright side.We felt like this song needed a really dramatic pleading moment, and we were buzzing when Joe from Maruja fancied doing a screamer for us.

‘JUDAS SONG’

It’s about betrayal, if the man’s name didn’t give it away. About recognising the darkness in yourself, the hurt you’ve caused and the deep tunnel you have to slog to self-realisation.

‘THE BEAST’

It’s going further into self-realisation and reckoning with how you see yourself and who your point if view changes in the reflection as life changes.

‘I ONCE HAD A KESTREL’

It’s a story about a kestrel I used to have when I was kid, it got loose and flew away. I was secretly happy it got out as I found it very sad to keep the bird locked away. I had to feed it defrosted dead chicks on a leather gauntlet, and I was glad I didn’t have to do that anymore. But then I realised her jesses were still attached to her feet and could get her stuck and kill her, but maybe that was no worse than staying locked away. It’s always stayed with me, and for many reasons it’s felt relevant to me and been on my mind.

‘THIN HORSES’

Feels like the final reflection on the album. There’s a lot of darkness in this album, and the sentiment of this song is about empathy and hope. The songs are dark because they are the evidence of pain, so they are the evidence of growth and resilience, and the care to use what hurts you as a reason to make something. It leaves things on something that gives you a feeling of needing to carry on in the face of everything that’s trying to stop you. It’s about trying to keep perspective when the shit hits the fan. We feel very lucky to have Rachel Goswel singing on this song. She’s a good mate and always been very supportive of us. She really elevates the song, and sends the listener off with a touch of beauty.