Led by the self-assured vocals of songwriter
Juliette Jackson, London indie rock outfit
the Big Moon take their lead from the grunge and Brit-pop groups of the 1990s. After debuting in 2015 with EP
The Road, they released their first album,
Love in the 4th Dimension, in 2017.
The Big Moon formed in 2014 following
Juliette Jackson's decision that a career in waitressing wasn't one she was prepared to commit to. After putting the word out, she met three other like-minded women through mutual friends, and
the Big Moon was born. With
Jackson leading, the rest of the band featured Soph Nathan on guitar and vocals,
Celia Archer on bass and vocals, and
Fern Ford on drums. The quartet headed to a rehearsal room in London's Stoke Newington and began to flesh out
Jackson's material.
The group self-produced the tracks "Sucker" and "Eureka Moment," releasing them on the fledgling Hard Up label in 2015. The latter song was an assured slice of grungy punk-pop recalling the abrasive yet melodically sweet output of groups like
the Breeders and
Elastica, and it brought them to the attention of the London music scene. They built on the exposure with a co-headlining tour in October 2015 alongside fellow London acts
INHEAVEN and
Vant. Following that tour, they found themselves supporting well-established performers like
Ezra Furman and
the Vaccines. These high-profile support slots brought them to the attention of Fiction, a subsidiary of
Universal Music, which issued their debut EP,
The Road, in March 2016. In August of that year, the group released a version of Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger," a cover that they regularly played live.
Their first long-player,
Love in the 4th Dimension, followed on Fiction in April of 2017. Its production team included
Catherine Marks (
the Wombats,
Alex Lahey), Rory Attwell (
Kid Wave,
the Ordinary Boys), and the band. Two months later,
the Big Moon appeared on singer/songwriter
Marika Hackman's album
I'm Not Your Man. They headed back into the studio, this time with producer
Ben H. Allen III (
Belle and Sebastian,
Deerhunter), and returned with the resulting
Walking Like We Do in 2020. ~ Bekki Bemrose