2012, a strange time. Taylor Swift’s Red was pretty much the biggest thing in pop music, Maroon 5 and Carly Rae Jepsen were at the peak of their stardom, and a few big names in the rap scene were finally starting to bubble up to the surface; Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar… you remember 2012. It’s arguable that this was the point in popular music where rock finally stopped being pop. After decades of guitar music dominating the charts, we were finally starting to see a change. As a result of this, a lot of bands got left behind. The Big Pink, for example, offer their own signature shoegaze laden brand of indie-pop that showed some real potential back in the 00s. But 2 LPs and a bit of a breakup meant that the band were gone, and the scene was changing. 10 years have passed since the band’s last album… the perfect time to come back! You can listen to new track ‘No Angels’ below.
While this isn’t the first time the band have released music since 2012, they released a single in 2015 called ‘Hightimes’ with the promise of a new album that never showed, the band have come back with a lot of conviction. In a conversation with NME, frontman Robbie Furze had this to say of the single, “’No Angels’ a development in our songwriting and our technical approach, but it does definitely have the same aesthetic as our first record,” elaborating, “That’s where I feel most comfortable in representing what The Big Pink stands for. It all made sense and this was always in my head as the first song to come back with.”
The sound of the new track may well be very reminiscent of the band’s early material, but with a noticeable change in influence and method. When asked why this is the time to bring the band back, Furze explained how the last decade of free time had allowed him to spend all of his time DJ-ing in LA, spending time with artists like The Kills’ Jamie Hince, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, and Jamie T. The noisey style has remained, but with a slight twang of an aged indie swagger. “We did a US tour with [Wolf Alice] in 2018 and that’s when I realised that this was my calling and I had to get back on stage – this is really what I wanted to do.” Furze concludes, “I didn’t want to mess around with anything else. It was time to do The Big Pink again.”
As happened back in 2015, there has been no confirmation of a new album, no evidence that it’s even in the pipeline, or any shows booked that could even show us some new music. But Furze seems confident. Watch this space.