Big Special have released a surprise new album National Average, out on SO Recordings. It arrives with the video of the single “God Save the Pony.”

When Big Special first emerged, their contorted mix of existential bellowing, vehement poetic polemics and soulful, sky-scraping vocals and hard-hitting punk instantly set them apart. Huge tours and festival headline spots followed, and somewhere in amongst the chaos of the ensuing year, the pair found time to write new album National Average It’s a record on which the band lose none of that early fire or potency, and instead expand their sound to incorporate elements of funk, lavishing it with their characteristic darkness and black humour, honestly representing their lives in the only way they know how. It focusses on brotherhood, pressing on through the changes in their lives, big and small.

Commenting on the new single, lead singer Joe Hicklin says: “‘God Save the Pony’ is about the stones we carry. The different things that pull people down; the invisible weights that they have to drag through their everyday. On the personal level, it’s about reckoning with change. Reflecting on the moral obligations we have to ourselves and others and the mixture of the failures and successes in sticking to those. The weight of following a personal moral line is heavy on everyone’s shoulders. The song is a recognition of this strain in ourselves and others, and a well wish to keep going, whatever you have that drags behind.”

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