Focus: Big Romance

Who are you and where are you from?
We are Dan, Greenup and Louis and we release music as Big Romance. We are a three-piece indie-rock outfit from Newcastle Upon Tyne.

What is it you do?
We’ve been writing music together for a while. Our old band Deep.Sleep was going until just after lockdown last year. During our time indoors, we had a lot of time to really dive deep into our sound and experiment with new ways of working when it came to writing and gave us a longing to play some material with a bit more bite. Given the circumstances, we were writing a lot of ‘louder’ music, to counter the quiet state of the world around us. At this point, our sound became noisier and rawer, with songs more geared towards a live setting that people could really get stuck into, that’s when Big Romance was truly born.

How long have you been doing it?
Dan and Louis have been making music together for over 10 years now. During that time we’ve learned a lot from each other and those around us and have a lot to write about as a result. Greenup was someone we’d heard about during his time in Transfigure and Schultz. We actually came to meet him through a mutual friend during one of the infamous ‘Stars in their eyes’ shows where we teamed up with Club Paradise and bigfatbig as a Paramore tribute act for the night. At the time, we were looking for a bassist and after weeks of teasing the idea, we brought him into the picture and the rest is history really. Collectively, we have so many years’ worth of experience within the local scene and we really can’t wait to bring our new sound to the stage. 

What inspires you?
We tend to create what we consume really so it’s quite a hard question because this seems to change weekly. Our older material was inspired by more indie pop bands, such as The 1975, but we’ve since taken a lot more inspiration from slacker rock artists such as Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and Diiv. 

Tell us about your music
We’d definitely consider ourselves as more of a guitar-driven band now. We’ve found that this has given us an opportunity to peel away from this pursuit of ‘perfect’ when it comes to writing, and as a result, we feel like the material we’re writing is a lot more honest and bears a lot more of an emotional weight when it comes to the lyrics. We’re not looking to write something perfect, we’re looking to write songs that are fun to play, and even more fun to sing with your friends in a big field or a sweaty venue. 

What have you got coming up in the future?
Our latest single Weekender is released this Friday (7th October). This is the first single from our upcoming EP, which you can expect to hear more about very soon. It’s a cynical slice of double-speed indie rock about how sometimes in order to try and make a relationship work, you have to pretend to like their friends to have a good time (I think we’ve all been there). We’re hugely excited by this and are celebrating by putting on our debut headline show at Bobiks on the same night. We’ll be playing the EP in full for the first time, alongside a couple of special surprises we’ve prepared for the night.

Where can people find out more about you?
You can find us across all social media platforms at @bigromanceband