“I’m really excited, because our equipment that we lost in Spain is slowly getting closer towards us,” Juliette Jackson beams as she logs on to a Zoom call with NME the week before The Big Moon release their third album, ‘Here Is Everything’. The four-piece had just wrapped up their biggest tour to date prior to our chat, but what should have been a celebratory return to the road after multiple delays became something of a fiasco thanks to their gear getting stuck – and then lost – in Spain.
“Our van broke down, our gear missed a flight, we couldn’t take it on another flight cos we couldn’t take enough bags,” the singer and guitarist lists off. “Brexit meant that we couldn’t separate the cases because of the new import/export laws. Then we sent it by FedEx, and then it was just gone.”
Despite the drama, though, getting back in front of a live audience – and with new material to share on stage – has been “amazing”. “I think we hit a point about a year ago where we thought, ‘Oh it’s just never gonna happen, let’s stop feeling excited,’” Jackson laughs. “So for it to actually have happened and to play new songs into people’s faces and see people’s reactions… It’s so important – it’s why we make music, to have those communal experiences together.”
Much like everyone else, the last couple of years have been anything but plain sailing for The Big Moon. As well as having to postpone this latest round of live dates again and again, the band had to get new jobs during the pandemic to replace the missing income they’d usually get from music. Bassist Celia Archer got stuck into working on a farm, while drummer Fern Ford and guitarist Soph Nathan became part of the delivery workforce. Jackson, meanwhile, went through one of life’s biggest changes – becoming a parent.
It’s that experience that is captured on ‘Here Is Everything’. The record reflects both the time before Jackson gave birth and, on ‘Daydreaming’, ‘Wide Eyes’, ‘High And Low’ and ‘Trouble’, the period after, summing up both the positives and negatives of impending motherhood. For the musician, who is The Big Moon’s principal songwriter, listening back to the record now feels like hearing two different versions of herself play out.
“It’s hard to even remember [what I used to be like] because there’s been two years of pandemic in-between,” she ponders, trying to describe the difference between old Jules and current Jules. “I used to have so much time to do things and time to sleep. It’s complicated because I love my life now, but I’m exhausted all the time and my energy for creativity is working at 10 per cent of what it once was.”
Songs like ‘Daydreaming’ (written about Jackson’s struggles with breastfeeding) and ‘Satellites’ (which tackles the morning sickness that left her “feeling like I was going to die”) confront the narrative about pregnancy and motherhood that is still widely pushed on expectant parents by society. In the general tale of the miracle of life, little room is made for the fear, confusion, grief or pain that can come with creating another human.
Sharing those lesser-acknowledged sides of the story did give Jackson some trepidation about the songs she was writing, but she knew she wanted to share her full experience. “It’s sometimes difficult to be that honest – especially because I’m usually an introvert. But I really wanted to, because all I wanted in that time was to hear other people’s stories of how they got through it,” she explains. “I had a really hard time breastfeeding, and the newborn period was really difficult for a few months. But there was also just so many feelings flying around that it was really indescribable.”
“I remember just pacing around my room listening to ‘Satellites’ on repeat. I just couldn’t let go of it – it’s a beautiful song” – Fern Ford
Although she notes how music is just one outlet to describe or process things happening in her life, there was little music already in existence that she could turn to for comfort. “If there had been music [around] that I knew was about how I was feeling, maybe I would have listened to it,” she shrugs. “I was just on Mumsnet every night, looking for those stories.”
The songs that make up ‘Here Is Everything’ are illuminating – and not just for the band’s fans. As Jackson sent them through to her bandmates, her creations offered them their only insights into her experiences. “Jules’ songs are our only way we ever really know how she’s feeling, because that’s how she processes and deals with stuff,” Ford explains (“I’m good at compartmentalising,” Jackson laughs). “We’d get a demo through and be like, ‘OK, I know where she’s at now’. But when they come in demo form, they almost feel way heavier than any amount of production can ever make them – not only are the words at their most raw, but musically they are as well. You’re literally getting the wet napkin with the tears on it.”
For the drummer, it was hearing the demo version of the curious, piano-led ‘Satellites’ for the first time that really left an impression on her. “I have a very clear memory of receiving that and playing it while I was faffing around on the computer and just being like, ‘Fuck,’” she recalls. “Then I remember just pacing around my room and lying on my bed and listening to it on repeat for about two hours. I just couldn’t let go of it – it’s a beautiful song.”
Jackson wrote the song when she was in the worst part of morning sickness: finding herself lying on the cold bathroom floor weak from nausea, she would think about all of the mothers who’d come before her.
“I’d never thought about that before – the chain of humans behind me who’d all gone through exactly the same thing so that I could exist or we could all exist,” she says. “We all know what our mums have done for us, but it wasn’t until that moment that I was able to feel it in that physical way. I was also quite newly into being pregnant and trying to accept what was going to happen, and looking back on my life before.”
Reflection is a big theme across ‘Here Is Everything’, such as the disco-tinged strut of ‘Trouble’ which finds Jackson revisiting the memory of giving birth. “There’s a railway bridge that I cross every day, and I crossed it the morning that I gave birth to go to my local hospital,” she explains. “I realised that, in my memory of that day, it was like a bridge over a canyon and 100 miles high. Being able to cross it again [now] and see it’s not like that meant that I was able to look at my memories of that time and put them back in proportion a little bit.”
In a time when Jackson was still getting to grips with motherhood and feeling quite alone in some of those struggles (“Only I had the boobs so only I could do something about it, but I couldn’t do anything,” she says of breastfeeding), that moment – and subsequent song – helped her let go. “You twist memories a lot, especially when you go through something emotional, tense or life-changing,” she reasons. “But ‘Trouble’ is me saying, ‘I’m well, my son’s well, I’m through that time and I don’t actually need to carry it around with me. I’m free of it.’”
There are plenty of positives to be found in The Big Moon’s beautiful new album, too. ‘High And Low’, which shifts from soft verses to a big eruption of a chorus, captures some of that positivity despite its enquiring lyric: “I wonder if you can die from sleep deprivation?” Jackson explains: “I felt so bad, but I also felt so in love with my son. The chorus of that song is so epically big, I feel like even if the words don’t make sense, the feeling of the chorus is exactly how I felt. It’s like, ‘I feel like shit, but I love you’. Motherhood is so, so many contradictions.”
That track, like a few of the songs on ‘Here Is Everything’, features the very first vocal take Jackson recorded, capturing precisely how tired she was at that moment in time. The band, who largely self-produced this album, decided to stick with the original take because of just how much of the singer’s reality it conveyed. “You try to get things technically correct, but that’s not the point,” Ford reasons. “The point is the delivery of the sentiment – that’s what’s important.”
The band had started work on the album before the pandemic hit, going to the US to work in a proper studio with Ben H. Allen III, who produced their 2020 album ‘Walking Like We Do’. They made what was essentially a whole album together, but ultimately felt like what they had wasn’t quite right. Instead of rushing it out before Jackson gave birth, the four-piece took her maternity leave as an opportunity to hit the brakes and reconsider where they were going with album three.
After six months of not mentioning the record to each other, they finally returned to the project. This time, Ford built a makeshift studio in her house and the band put their songs under the microscope, pulling them apart and dissecting what was missing or how they could be improved. Sometimes, without the resources of a big fancy studio to pull from, that meant getting inventive with household items.
“You can have all the expensive shit you want, but, really, sometimes all you need is a fucking baking tray,” the drummer deadpans about one of the more unusual items that features on the record. “We also didn’t have any cymbals at Fern’s house, so we would just record ourselves going, ‘Wooshooshh’,” Jackson grins. “With the right guitar pedals, you can make the dumbest sounds sound like something cool.”
“Motherhood is so, so many contradictions” – Juliette Jackson
Taking the reins of production is something the band are potentially keen to do again in the future – when they eventually get to thinking about what will come next, that is.
“Making this album, some of it was a difficult process,” Jackson explains. “But the easiest parts were when we were together, doing what we wanted without another producer. Now that we’ve done it, we know that we can do it. But, at the same time, there’s always more to learn, isn’t there? With the right people, you can collaborate really well and come up with something new and learn something new, so we’ll see.”
After two tumultuous years, ‘Here Is Everything’ finds The Big Moon back on top – at their most vital and brilliant yet. The feeling in the band right now is just as positive, bringing them back together as the gang of best friends they first emerged as back in 2014.
“During the pandemic, we all sort of satellited,” Jackson explains. “We were working, I was parenting, we were just doing other stuff and not seeing each other. That could have carried on – a lot of people in the music industry have retrained – but I think what we learned in the last couple of years is that we all really love making music together, and we love being in this band. It’s a recommitment – we’ve renewed our vows to each other, basically.”
The Big Moon’s new album ‘Here Is Everything’ is out on Friday (October 14)
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