For almost a decade now The Big Easy have carved out a space within the contemporary rock scene, with most recent album A Long Year, released in 2020 via Forged Artifacts, evoking the highs and lows of life with cathartic passion. The record saw lead Stephen Berthomieux confront “the anxieties and struggles of a year in his own life, a period which saw the dissolution of a relationship and several relocations,” as we wrote in our review, but this was all delivered with the kind of “sweat-stained, beer-soaked punk songs that will make a proportion of the pandemic-era housebound population misty-eyed.” Indie rock at its most unguarded and confessional.
Only that wasn’t entirely true. Because for all of the authenticity of Berthomieux’s emotive delivery, he always left a certain distance between himself and the music. His own experiences processed into something a little more relatable for the overwhelmingly white rock scene, as though to exist as a Black person within such spaces is to be made to erase certain parts of yourself. To bend towards the audience and the conventions they bring.
It’s notable then that The Big Easy’s latest album, (It’s No Secret) The Truth As Bad As The View, is the first to feature Berthomieux’s image on the cover. The first symbol on a record that looks to grapple with exactly how and why a person of colour might be made to feel an interloper within certain artistic circles. Berthomieux cites a James Baldwin statement as a key to realigning his perspective. “To be a Negro in this country,” Baldwin wrote, “and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time.” Suddenly what had for so long seemed like a personal hang-up or imposter syndrome was revealed to be an intrinsic part of the Black experience, and to connect his own emotions with a historic struggle proved liberating. Thus the album became an exercise in owning his identity and finally voicing those things kept buried for so long. “It’s No Secret is kind of like a journal,” as Berthomieux concludes, “a place where I can express the things that I haven’t been able to say out loud.”
Listen to latest single ‘Explanations vs Reality’ now for a glimpse into the album’s raw energy and emotion:
