The Big Moon Gig Review at Liverpool O2 Academy 2 – 28/02/2020

2020 is all set to be a big year for the all-female band The Big Moon – having already provided support for Bombay Bicycle Club and now with a sold-out headline tour of their own underway. Several festival dates are also planned, and they have just been unveiled as Record Store Day Ambassadors.

The band are also riding high following the recent release of their second album ‘Walking Like We Do’ which has already rightly seen them nominated for Best British Band at the NME Awards.

The Support…

This was the first time in nearly 3 years The Big Moon had played Liverpool and it was to a packed crowd at the O2 Academy 2, a popular and well-established venue on the Liverpool music scene. Support came from Prima Queen; refreshingly another all-female band, with great harmonies and a dream-pop influenced sound, they went down a storm. Their song ‘Brownstone’ really captures them at their best.

With the current focus on the lack of female artists and gender balancing of festivals now an important and prominent issue, both bands are great examples of how this can be achieved.

The Performance…

As The Big Moon took to the stage, the atmosphere noticeably heightened. Their opening track ‘Sucker’ from their Mercury Music Prize nominated first album (2017’s ‘Love in the 4^th Dimension’) was a real crowd pleaser, with the bands tight harmonies and catchy melodies setting the tone for the rest of the set perfectly.

The set was a perfect mix of their older favourites and newer songs, real highlights included ‘Cupid’ (for me, the stand out track from their first album), ‘Barcelona’ (look out for the flute duet intro), ‘Formidable’ and ‘Bonfire’ (both sung word-for-word by their fans). An unexpected cover of Fatboy Slim’s ‘Praise You’ came straight after the more sombre ‘Waves’ and showed a diverse range of musical versatility and emotion.

The set came to a close with final track ‘Your Light’, a song of anthemic quality that gave the crowd a high note to end the night on.

I expect we will hear much more from The Big Moon as their momentum continues throughout 2020.