Every now and again in your chequered and bumpy journey through life, there are special bands that come along. Ones that help you along that road, helping to smooth the bumps, to make the uphill parts of that journey a bit less exhausting and carry you across the massive potholes and dodge the unexpected sinkholes.
Duncan Reid and the Big Heads is one of those bands.
When music is such a massive part of your life, you have unbounded admiration, even love, for loads of bands, many of them holding a special place in your heart, and you attend countless gigs filling your life with the sights and sounds that bring you pleasure, it is a nigh on impossible task to pick favourites. But sometimes a band comes along and becomes one of those bands that stands out in the crowd.
Duncan Reid and the Big Heads is one of those bands.
When you are in a situation where a hefty portion of your earnings goes on records, CDs, tickets and t-shirts meaning you sometimes have to make hard decisions, do I eat or buy music, no, I jest…which album do you buy, what gig do you go to and which do you reluctantly have to sacrifice for the greater good? But there is always that one band. They can do no wrong. Everything they touch turns to gold. You don’t have to give it a second thought. You will be at their gig, even if it means missing your own funeral. You get that exciting feeling of anticipation, butterflies verging on full scale excitement akin to the feelings you had on Christmas Eve when you were a wean, when you lift the needle onto the first track of their new LP.
That band that transcends description, the one that there haven’t been enough superlatives created yet to describe them.
Duncan Reid and the Big Heads is that band.
Hook, Line and Sinker
It is hard to describe the impact this band has on me. I’m not going to pretend I was there from the start. I was still playing with my Star Wars toys when Duncan “The Kid” Reid was playing bass with The Boys and I didn’t come across The Big Heads until their second album. However, from the very first moment I saw them on stage in Glasgow’s Audio, I was reeled in. No going back now. Hook, line and sinker.
From that moment on, every time I have seen the band live, they have surpassed my expectations. And let me tell you after that first time, my expectations were high. They had set the bar not just for other gigs, but for themselves. Each time, they just raise it slightly more. Gig of the year 2017, 2018, 2019…. oh shit 2020, a year without a Big Heads gig beckons…I made a mistake once in saying Duncan Reid and the Big Heads was ONE of the best live bands in the world. I won’t make that mistake again.
What makes this band so special I hear you say? The obvious response would be “Have you fucking heard them?” but, while the music is a sheer joy (I suppose I should talk about that at some point, after all when I started this it was an album review) they are more than the sum of their parts.
Stellar? Nah, interstellar…
The music is obviously something that attracts you to a band, and this band’s music is damned special, they excel. But leaving that aside for the moment, if the records are stellar, their live performances are interstellar, live is where they surpass themselves. The whole experience is thrilling, the band is so tight, both musically and as a group of people. They exude fun from every pore and the sheer unconstrained energy that radiates from the stage is immediate and palpable. I need to stop now. I’m beginning to upset myself that this will not be witnessed for some time…
The fact that off stage they are all genuinely lovely people helps too. Nothing, excuse the pun, big headed about this lot. Just four beautiful people with an abundance of talent between them. We salute you Duncan Reid, Sophie K Powers, Karen Jones and Nick Hughes.
Don’t Blame Yourself
Oh yeah, the new album, well its OK I suppose.
Ha.
I jest again.
In the absence of a gig anytime in the foreseeable, lets make do with a new album. Make do? Pah. That isn’t something in the vocabulary of Duncan Reid and the Big Heads. Once again, on Don’t Blame Yourself the quartet have excelled themselves. Perhaps their best album to date?
Nothing I’ll say can give enough justification to how much pleasure this album has given me since I got my sticky paws on it.
Your Future Ex Wife sums up what the band is all about in one song. Instantly addictive power pop/punk, richly melodious, pithy lyrics and absorbing storytelling with harmonies to die for. Give me more…
Just when you think track two is going to be a mellow ballad, Motherfucker kicks up a gear. When Duncan sings the chorus, I must say, this is the most eloquently expressive rendering of the word I’ve ever heard in a song. I should at this point mention, Duncan has helpfully had the story behind each song printed on the inner sleeve. He’s definitely not a Motherfucker
Another of “those bands” was Heavy Drapes, who I saw play with Duncan Reid on a couple of occasions. Grim Reaper was influenced by the untimely death of Garry Borland within weeks of Jez from The Fuckwits and Duncan’s friend Neil McNaughton. While the song is slightly more serene and mellow, this isn’t a sad song. It is a song about living life to the full, just as Garry did, and sticking a middle finger up to death in rebellion.
All killer, no filler
There isn’t a bad song on this album. Neither are there good songs. There are just phenomenal songs. The phrase all killer, no filler was made for records like this. Ask me to pick a highlight and one minute it with be the magnificence of For All We Know, the next it will be Welcome to My World, then it will be the T-Rex glam tinged title track Don’t Blame Yourself bemoaning the widespread xenophobia that has been on the increase in the years since the whole Brexit debacle started. Oh wait – what about the infectious and uplifting To Live or Live Not. You get the picture.
The playing on this album is second to none, the arrangements ingenious, production rich and warm and the shrewd lyrical couplings, Duncan has a natural knack for these.
It is safe to say this album will be a constant on the turntable for a good while.
The final word – every band needs a theme tune, inspired by his love of The Monkees, The Big Heads now have one too. Ballad of a Big Head is a song especially the band and all the devoted Big Heads across the world.
I am a Big Head. You are a Big Head. We are all Big Heads.
If you aren’t, now is the time to become a Big Head too and spread the love
I’m off to crank the volume up to 11 and convert the neighbours.