Following the announcement of their monolithic new album “nature morte“, out on February 24th, 2023, Canadian trio Big|Brave has announced an extensive European & UK tour for Spring 2023. The tour includes performances at Roadburn Festival, Donaufestival and Desertfest, among others.
The trio’s first nature morte single “carvers, farriers and knaves” captures the album’s striking balance between expansive atmospherics and direct emotional drive, guitar and vocals twisting atop thundering drums to create one of the most bracing and relentless pieces in the band’s ouvre.
Big|Brave are an elemental trio who harness an earthen heaviness composed of distorted and textural drones, austere bombast, and Wattie’s heart-rending voice. Like recent collaborators The Body, Big|Brave is at the forefront of reconfiguring the landscape of heavy music.
The trio brandish sparseness and density like weapons, cast tense atmospheres with languid tempos and mutate feedback into eruptions of enveloping tempests. “nature morte“ sharpens Big|Brave’s ferocity and expansive sound into emotional elegies for the disenfranchised, wringing abstracted textures and pure fervence into songs of unfathomable mass.
European & UK Tour Dates 2023:
Apr. 9 – Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang
Apr. 10 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen
Apr. 11 – Malmö, SE – Plan B
Apr. 12 – Oslo, NO Blå
Apr. 14 – Helsinki, FI – Kuudes Linja
Apr. 15 – Tallinn, EE – Sveta Baar
Apr. 16 – Riga, LV – Noass
Apr. 18 – Vilnius, LI – XI20
Apr. 19 – Warsaw, PL – Voodoo
Apr. 20 – Poznań, PL – Dom Tramwajarza
Apr. 21 – Berlin, DE – Urban Spree
Apr. 23 – Tilburg, NL – Roadburn Festival
Apr. 26 – Nurnberg, DE – KANTINE (beim Künstlerhaus)
Apr. 27 – Dresden, DE – Ostpol
Apr. 28 – Krems, AT – Donaufestival
Apr. 29 – Zagreb, HR – Kset
Apr. 30 – Bologna, IT – Circolo Dev
May 2 – Piediripa, IT (MC) Dong
May 4 – Busto Arsizio, IT – Circolo Gagarin
May 5 – Bulle, CH – Ebullition
May 7 – London, UK – Desertfest
May 9 – Manchester, UK – Soup Kitchen
May 10 – Glasgow, UK – Stereo
May 11 – Newcastle, UK – The Lubber Fiend
May 12 – Liverpool, UK – IWF Substation
May 13 – Norwich, UK – Voodoo Daddy
May 14 – Birmingham, UK – The Castle & Falcon
May 15 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
May 16 – Bristol, UK – Dareshack
May 17 – Brighton, UK – The Hope & Ruin
May 18 – Brussels, BE – Ancienne Belgique
The title “nature morte” is the French term for still life paintings whose literal translation is “dead nature”. Big|Brave colour the songs of nature morte with unease, creating an air of beauty in decay, chords suspended in contemplative stillness. Wattie’s experiences structuring lyrics and song forms on The Body & Big|Brave’s Leaving None But Small Birds informed her work on nature morte, creating stories that, like many folk tales, are at once specific and universal. Wattie’s voice manages to be commanding and vulnerable with impressive range and intimacy. Even her gasps carve their way through the tidal crash of Ball’s distortion wail and the pummel of Hudson’s drums. “the fable of subjugation” conveys pain through strained drones free of time, an aching minimalism that withers slowly before bursting in an outright roar. nature morte is an excavation of dark inner chasms of feelings both ineffable and visceral. The album tackles the folly of hope, the consequences of trauma, often centres on the subjugation of femininity in all its pluralities. “It is violent and terrible. It is crushing and alarming. It is common and basic”, says Wattie. “It is catastrophic and disheartening”.
Pre-order “nature morte” (out on February 24th 2023) here.
Tracklist:
1. carvers, farriers and knaves
2. the one who bornes a weary load
3. my hope renders me a fool
4. the fable of subjugation
5. a parable of the trusting
6. the ten of swords
The momentum of nature morte conjures the image of a beast collapsing beneath its own weight before resiliently staggering upright to thunder onward. Big|Brave convey heft from silence as deftly as they do from swaths of feedback and distortion to cathartic ends. “Distortion is key”, notes Ball. The three members recorded primarily live over the course of a week at Machines with Magnets with Seth Manchester, pushing the potential of their instruments beyond expectations. For each song the trio’s song writing and attention to detail deliver its simple but devastating emotional power. On “the parable of trusting” Hudson’s cymbal clangs reverberate through Ball’s guitar, stirring out a hauntingly hollow texture. On “my hope renders me a fool”, plumes of low growl and crooning feedback dissolve into clean pensive chords. Opener “carvers, farriers, and knaves”, one of the most relentless and bracing pieces in their oeuvre, deliver with the soar of guitar and voice twisting atop Hudson’s bouldering percussion creating an imposing terrain. Across the album’s six pieces Big|Brave create a tension between immediacy and patience, invoking the essence of disquiet, while conveying anguish through inventive arrangements and nuanced performances. nature morte captures Big|Brave at their heaviest and their mournful fury is at its zenith, an album where each moment is so immense and consuming that it possesses its own gravitational pull.
