SCAN spoke to two members of London four-piece, The Big Moon, to find out about their Debut album and what they hope to be doing over the next couple of years.
To break the ice, could you please say your name, what you do in the band and an interesting fact about yourself?
Celia: My name is Celia and I play bass and sing backing vocals, and I can name all 151 generation 1 Pokémon.
Jules: I’m Jules. I sing, play guitar.
Celia: And she writes all the songs.
Jules: And I write the songs. And… I was once a taster staff for McDonald’s.
Celia: True story!
Really? How was that experience?
Jules: Pretty revolting, actually. Made me feel quite sick. I had to try all their new wraps.
Celia: How much did you get paid for it?
Jules: 120 quid.
Celia: It’s not bad.
Jules: Great! Got free dinner.
Tonight, you’re playing in Manchester. How are you feeling about playing in this city again?
Jules: Very excited because the show is sold out, and we really like Manchester and all the people here are great.
Celia: Yeah, never had a bad show in Manchester. And even though we’ve played here loads of times, it’s our first ever headline show that’s just us. So it’s really cool that it’s sold out because we’ve enjoyed playing here so much, so it’s nice to know that people have enjoyed watching us enough to come and see us on our own
For your debut album Love In The 4th Dimension, you worked with Catherine Marks, who’s very famous for producing for Foals, The Killers, Wolf Alice. How was your experience working with her?
Celia: She is a dream babe.
Jules: She’s an absolute boss.
Celia: Yeah. And kind of a dork at the same time, which I find super endearing.
Jules: It’s a perfect combination. She’s just an amazing producer and she made us sound like how we sound live, which is what we wanted to sound like. We didn’t want anyone to kind of project or just put their own thing on it. We wanted to just sound like us.
Celia: And she can also drink lots of tequila.
Jules: Oh my god! She can drink so much tequila!
Celia: So much! I’ve never seen anyone… She drank it like wine.
Jules: Straight! She drinks it straight out of like a cocktail glass.
Celia: We’ve been over to her house for dinner, but there wasn’t any dinner. There was just two bottles of tequila and a bottle of vodka! [laughs].
Jules: We had a great time. We ended up all like singing along to Natalie Imbruglia really loud. Screaming it, actually.
Over the past few years, you must’ve grown as a live band. How do you compare yourselves live now to your first ever gig?
Jules: Oh my god, it’s like a tadpole compared to a blue whale.
Celia: We’re different people. I spent the whole gig looking at my shoes, occasionally looking up to see my friends and then I looked down at my shoes again… I was just starring at my bass just like: make sure you play the right notes at the right time… And now it’s like they’re in my bones, those songs, sometimes…
Jules: You do it without thinking about it.
Celia: We’ve just started playing a new song, literally the last gig in Dublin. And because Ireland shows, they’re a bit quieter than our other ones and so you can have quite a lot of fun with them. So I was having quite a lot of fun with the show in Dublin. Just like semi-drunk and then was like: “Oh my God! I have to not be drunk because I have to play this song that I’ve never played before!”, and play it on keys, which is not what I normally do and had to refocus, so it was quite good and it felt like the first gig again. It’s quite nice to know that you can still have that feeling.
Jules: Yeah, it’s exciting playing new songs because it feels dangerous.
So you’ve completely evolved and you take more risks live?
Jules: Yeah, definitely. I still think we’re just… we’re so much more confident. I really enjoy being on stage these days, it doesn’t scare me anymore.
Celia: I also like watching you guys as well now that I’m not watching my fingers, I can look up and be like: “Hey! She did that funny thing! That’s so Jules!”. I really enjoy that.
Is there any particular song of yours that is relatable to all four of you?
Celia: ‘Formidible’ is the one that I feel most, like when I sing, I mean it the most rather than like, you know, ‘Silent Movie Susie’, for example.
Jules: I feel like ‘Silent Movie Susie’ is a song that only I will ever really understand. However many times I try to explain it. There are some where I feel like we feel like we’re a gang, like when we sing ‘Cupid’, we’re all just pounding our instruments all at once like an army.
Have your fans ever talked to you about how a particular song made them feel? Because these are your [Jules’s] personal experiences but at the same time when you sing about them, some of the stuff might be figurative, some of that might be literal.
Jules: We’ve had people say that, you know, a certain song got them through a bad break-up that they’ve had. Someone said that they were like doing an equestrian competition and they would listen to one of our songs on the car on the way there and it was like perking them up for the competition every time.
You’ve already played at The Great Escape Festival, Visions. You’ve supported The Maccabees, The Vaccines, so all the big names. You’re also going to perform at Reading & Leeds Festival, which is very exciting. But is there any dream venue/town/country that you’re just dying to visit and play there?
Celia: So many… I wanna play in Tokyo. I wanna play Sasquatch! Festival in America.
Jules: I wanna play in Iceland.
Celia: Me too!
Jules: I wanna play Brixton Academy.
Celia: I wanna play in New Zealand. And I also wanna headline Brixton Academy, we’ve played it a few times but I want it to be our show. I wanna play Thalia Hall in Chicago.
Antoine [the manager]: [whispers] Hollywood Bowl!
Jules: Wembley Stadium.
Celia: I wanna play my old school hall [laughs]. Oh and Mexico! Mexico City, Brazil, all of South America!
Jules: Antarctica…
Celia: Lapland!
2017 has been, I hope, spectacular for you so far. But is there anything that you’re aiming to achieve this year as a band or do you have any future plans that you’re dying to accomplish?
Jules: I really wanna just go and run around in festival fields, be really drunk. Is that really bad? That’s what I really want. I want the summer to be happening. And I wanna write some more songs. If we’re ever not on tour for a moment, I get this urge to be in my room, playing guitar.
Celia: That’s good! That means we can do a second album!
Thank you so much for the interview. I hope that you’ll be growing bigger and bigger and that you’ll be gaining more fans and that you’ll play at every venue that you wish for. And of course, I hope you grow stronger together as a band and friends.
Jules: Oh, thanks! I hope your dreams come true too!
The Big Moon’s debut album ‘Love In The 4th Dimension’ is out now.
