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Apr 10, 2017 The Big Moon By Stephen Mayne

Buzz has long been building around London four-piece The Big Moon, and their debut demonstrates it wasn’t misplaced enthusiasm. The album starts already revved up, the all-female band led by Juliette Jackson flying straight into 2015 single “Sucker,” the first of a dozen sculpted tracks.

With charmingly breezy glibness, and sharp edges smoothed down, a honed collection of pop-rock songs follow as Love in the 4th Dimension unfolds. The general pattern sees a build with guitar bursts and staccato drumming, moving from Jackson’s confident delivery to carefully harmonized choruses.

There are hints of the aftertaste of Britpop in her style, but their music owes as much to the following generation. On the likes of “Happy New Year” and “Silent Movie Susie” they come across as a calmer, more soulful echo of The Fratellis, and a less jagged Arctic Monkeys, ramping each song up to a steadily impressive crescendo.

Their full-length arrival comes without the rawness often seen on debuts, an attribute working for and against them, and the energy sags by the end, but the balancing act achieved between weary soulfulness and excitement is not bad at all. Consistently solid, and sometimes more, the foundations look strong. If they continue to move forward and start to cut loose a little, we might be listening for a while to come. (www.thebigmoon.co.uk)

Author rating: 6.5/10