The Big Moon, Get Inuit and The Mysterines: The Magnet, Liverpool

Big Moon

As The Big Moon carry on with their ascendancy Getintothis’ Lauren Wise was at the Magnet to chart their rise to great things.

The Big Moon are the London-based four piece who have been burning a hole in the stratosphere of the British music scene with their mix of punk, indie and raw guitar music.

After the release of their Mercury nominated album, Love In The Fourth Dimension, this April, the four piece have been touring non-stop, promoting not only their own album but also those of their side projects.

The band, fronted by Juliette Jackson, also provided the backing to Marika Hackman‘s second album, I’m Not Your Man, earlier this year and accompanied her on her tour of North America over the summer.

After a packed month hitting cities such as Los Angeles, Portland and Brooklyn, The Big Moon are now firmly back on UK soil and performing their live shows to music-loving Brits.

We caught them at The Magnet in Liverpool, with support from Get Inuit and The Mysterines.

In the depths of one of Liverpool’s rising music venues, The Magnet, a growing young audience begins to gather in preparation for the descent of The Big Moon, and denim jackets, culottes and Doc Martens are rife.

First up is support act The Mysterines, who appeared earlier this year at Hoylake’s Skeleton Coast festival.

The three piece are tight-knit and fresh faced, which is exactly what a brand new punk-sounding band calls for.

The Wirral-based band perform a setlist full of choppy guitar music inspired by blues, with particular highlights being PHD and set closer 50s Night Out.

Introducing: Hollows, Off The Grid, The Zangwills

After a brief interval and a distinct increase in crowd numbers, Kent hailing Get Inuit grace the stage with their upbeat indie tunes adorned with a talented vocal range from frontman and songwriter Jamie Glass.

The most noteworthy songs of the set include Coping With Death, In A Nutshell and Barbiturates, both of which convey the bands’ guitar indie-pop to a tee. Finale I’m Wasting My Life needed not to be sung by Jamie as the crowd seemed perfectly versed in relaying his own vocals back to him.

The band are even enough to coax out headliners The Big Moon from an exclusive backstage area and into the wilderness of the fans who would soon be chanting their very own songs back to them.

It’s not long before one final interval gives the audience a chance to refresh drinks and nip to the loo when the lights begin to dim and one by one the highly anticipated four piece themselves head onstage.

Wasting no time they burst straight into the beginning of their set with Silent Movie Susie, both an excitable and harmonious number that riles the crowd into the expected frenzy.

Swiftly launching into Nothing Without You, it’s bassist Celia Archer’s talented harmonising and playing that take the metaphorical centre stage while Juliette takes the literal one.

After a succession of tracks from the album including Happy New Year, The Road and The End, it’s Pull The Other One that truly grabs the audience, shoves them face first into a Pixies-style song and doesn’t move until it has left with the reaction it came for.

Taking the tone down a notch was Zeds, followed by Eureka Moment.

In true The Big Moon style, a set would not be complete without stripping back and building up a cover that they would be able to call their own. This time it was Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, which offered Soph Nathan an opportunity to display her deeper soothing tones to the audience without harmonising alongside bandmates.

In amongst the almost constant stream of hits is a fair number of audience chat from band members, and while they may have been nominated for a Mercury Prize, there’s no snobbery with The Big Moon.

In spite of successes that would be enough to make anyone’s head grow to three times the size, they’re still able to connect with the audience in a humble way, with Juliette even retelling an anecdote of a man on the train having the audacity to suck a Mini Cheddar (we’re not sure).

Getting back on track to the reason we all came, the band head back to songs from their own repertoire with Cupid and Formidable. Both are met with an energy and enthusiasm that is only possible once there have been a fair few alcoholic units consumed, luckily there’s plenty more fuel for this.

It’s Bonfire that really brings audience participation to its peak as singer Juliette takes a leap into the crowd and sings passionately with everyone around her, getting really stuck in to getting to know the Liverpool audience.

Topping off the evening is the best song of the night, Sucker. Aptly the last line of the song describes how we can only presume everyone is feeling towards the all-female four piece sharing their music with the world: “I’m a sucker for you”.

Images by Getintothis’ Chris Flack