The Big Nowhere
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The Big Nowhere

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"Bluesbunny Reviews : Pull Down The Moon"

There's plenty of country in Glasgow. Country music that is. Always popular with the gun toting, stetson wearing occupants of the number 62 bus on a Saturday night, its influence pervades more than weekend cowboys on their way to the Grand Old Opry (there is actually one in Glasgow!).

It's something of a heritage thing and something of a hat thing as well. A stetson is so much cooler than a bunnet or a baseball cap - everybody knows that. Nobody impersonates truck drivers here; they all want to be gunfighters. The point of that little ramble was to put the Big Nowhere's album into context. There are songs on it about going out, drinking too much and going home with another woman's lipstick on your cheek. I'm sure that is a pretty universal experience and it happens as much in Nashville as it does in Newton Mearns (and yet it never happens where I live, of course). Many of the best country songs - and we're not talking the check shirt wearing AOR that get passed off as country these days - are about the mundane matters in life and these songs reflect that. Like those country songs, there is a moral behind the misadventure portrayed on this album but there's more than enough dry humour to stop your spirit from getting dragged down. Universal themes made in Glasgow but with barely more than a hint of a Scottish accent.

However, I'll a sucker for this kind of thing so this album gets the thumbs up. So tell me "…Satan, where are you going with my baby?" - Bluesbunny


"CD Review: The Big Nowhere – Pull Down the Moon"

This project started when Billy Crowe, late of UK goth/shoegaze act Summersalt and Simon Sinclair of edgy Glasgow funk band Brown Eye Superfly decided to join forces and combine the songs that for one reason or another didn’t fit in with either of their other projects. The first question that comes to mind here is that this might be a parody. Well, maybe a little. The Big Nowhere fall somewhere between the Nashville gothic of the Dead Cowboys, the over-the-top C&W silliness of David Allan Coe and the deadpan, straight-up country satire of Uncle Leon & the Alibis. Musically, they manage to be simultaneously true to their influences (the usual suspects: Hank, Johnny, Lefty) while adding a completely unexpected playfulness. For example, the lead instrument on Why Won’t You Make My Telephone Ring is a reverby Vox organ, hardly something you’d hear on a Nashville session from 1955.

The cd opens very cleverly with Some Kind of Sickness, a dead-on evocation of an old 78 right down to the scratches across the grooves and the unmistakable quaver of a warp in the record. I Promise You Honey I Was Out with the Guys sets the tone for much of the rest of the album, mostly acoustic and completely deadpan, produced with care and good taste yet spiked with a pingy little electric guitar part that would sound vastly more at home on, say, an early 10,000 Maniacs album. I Got Love nicks the melody of the oldies radio chestnut Help by Bobby Bare, strips away the cliches and actually makes it palatable. Last Night with Lucy-Anne reverts to a musically straight-up but lyrically tongue-in-cheek feel.

A horn section, of all things, kicks off the 6/8 ballad Johnny Walker Red, which starts out sad but doesn’t stay that way long. On Untitled Satan Song, the narrator addresses the man with the forked tongue and the tail with the utmost respect even though he stole the poor guy’s girl (maybe he doesn’t want to end up where she’s going). By contrast, the murder ballad My Name Is Bob Willis, complete with police radio sample, is stark and haunting. Song for Suzannah takes the point of view of someone on the receiving end of the gun, with a neat trick ending. The album tails off toward the end, but overall it’s a lot of fun, more so the more closely you listen. - Lucid Culture


Discography

Pull Down The Moon - The Big Nowhere (DevilShake) 2009
Things We Lost In The Flood - The Big Nowhere (DevilShake) 2009
Don't Burn the Fortune - The Big Nowhere (DevilShake) 2011 (forthcoming)

'I Got Love' from Pull Down The Moon is available on the BBC6 Music Introducing With Tom Robinson Podcast episode dated 14.02.11 - The theme of the episode was 'My Bloody Valentine'.

Pull Down The Moon is available on the Spotify platform.

Things We Lost In The Flood is available as a free download from Soundcloud.com

Photos

Bio

The Big Nowhere

In the Summer of 2008, Billy Crowe and Simon Sinclair got together over many drinks and many more tales of broken bones and broken hearts. With a shared love of their parents' and grandparents' record collections, both decided that the other would
be the perfect fit for the material they were writing, and The Big Nowhere took it's first shaking, tentative steps into the light.

Both started sending each other rough recordings of new songs, and a period of sustained musical one-upmanship began.
Sessions eventually started properly in the winter of 2008. The first sessions were mainly just putting down guide acoustic
guitar and vocal tracks, with overdubs being done as the idea sprung to mind - it was a relaxed, laid-back affair.
Everything on the album was recorded in Simon's living room.

'Pull Down The Moon' was released in May 2009 on the band's own Devil Shake imprint to glowing reviews. The band were
championed by the likes of Dave Arcari and playlisted on Tom Fahey's 'americanaok' radio show, also earning The Big Nowhere a prime time slot during British Music Week 2009, and the coveted Saturday night slot at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut's 20th anniversary shows in February 2010, playing to a sold-out house with Swedish spacey-folk sister-duo First Aid Kit. Legendary British singer-songwriter Tom Robinson has also championed The Big Nowhere via his Radio 6 Music show, playing tracks from 'Pull Down The Moon', including 'I Got Love' from the album on the 'My Bloody Valentine' edition of the show for valentine's day 2011.

'Pull Down The Moon' is available only as a digital download from iTunes, Amazon mp3 and other fine purveyors of digital music. It is also available on the Spotify platform.

With too many tracks recorded to fit on the album, the band's second release on Devil Shake was 'Things We Lost In The
Flood', a free download EP comprising outakes from the Pull Down The Moon sessions. This can be downloaded free from Soundcloud.com or Last.fm.

In December 2009, work started on the full length follow up, titled 'Don't Burn The Fortune'. Billy, Simon and Joe Keegan
(piano on 'Pull down the Moon') were now joined by Arvid "Howie" Haubold (double bass, flute, harmonica), D.P. Johnston
(drums, percussion), Helen Mitchell (trumpet), Sandie Bishop (violin), Malcolm McMaster (pedal steel) and Rhona Proctor (backing vocals). The album will be released in the late Spring/early summer of 2011, and will mark both an expansion of and a departure from the themes and styles of the music on 'Pull Down The Moon'. The darkness will be a little darker, the light touches will be a little lighter, and the heartbreak will cut just that little deeper.

The music of The Big Nowhere has been described as anything from Rock, Folk, Country, Americana, alt.country, to a mixture of them all. Their music has the feel of the kind of records that just don't get made any more. The ability to tell
stories via songs, or just to try and evoke some kind of feeling through the music.

Songs of heartbreak, loss and regret - Welcome to Nowhere

The Big Nowhere, 21st February 2011.

“Musically, they manage to be simultaneously true to their influences, while adding a
completely unexpected playfulness..”

“..a lot of fun, more so the more closely you listen..”

“..produced with care and good taste..”

Lucid Culture review of Pull Down The Moon

“..we're not talking the check shirt wearing AOR that gets passed off as country
these days..”

“..this album gets the thumbs up..”

Bluesbunny review of Pull Down The Moon