Big Ups are pleased to announce the follow-up to their breakout 2014 debut album, Eighteen Hours of Static. The New York four-piece – comprised of Joe Galarraga (vocals), Amar Lal (guitar), Carlos Salguero Jr. (bass), and Brendan Finn (drums) – will release their second full-length, Before a Million Universes, on March 4th in the UK via Tough Love and Brace Yourself Records, andExploding in Sound in North America.
Following on from the record’s first teaser ‘Capitalized‘ (which appeared online before Christmas alongside plans for a spring UK/EU tour – more details on that below), the band have also shared a second taster of Before a Million Universes in the guise of the angular cyclone that is ‘National Parks‘: the album’s emotional and musical core, a song that Galarraga wrote as a tribute to the sacrifices his mother made to raise him.
We’re led through the anger and bewilderment – at his mom’s solitary walks through their neighborhood and the selfishness inherent to childhood – and into a coda where you can almost see the sun streaming through the trees of Galarraga’s park, drums steady and swelling, a transition in tone and mood that this band has nearly perfected. “I think I saw her say to herself / This is everything I’ve missed.”
The album draws its title from a Walt Whitman quote (“”let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes”) and serves as a fist in the face of complacency, which is, equally, an apt summary of the band’s fiery live show – returning to European shores in spring 2016.
UK/EU Live Dates
Mar 28th | Broadcast, Glasgow, UK
Mar 29th | Gullivers, Manchester, UK
Mar 30th | The Lexington, London, UK
Mar 31st | Headrow House, Leeds, UK
Apr 1st | Louisiana, Bristol, UK
Apr 2nd | Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham, UK
Apr 4th | La Peniche, Lille, FR
Apr 5th | Mécanique Ondulatoire, Paris, FR
Apr 6th | VK, Brussels, BE
Apr 8th | Vera, Groningen, NL
Apr 9th | Stroomhuis, Eindhoven, NL
Apr 10th | MTC, Cologne, DE
Apr 11th | B72, Vienna, AT
Apr 12th | Freakout Club, Bologna, IT
Apr 13th | Ligera, Milan, IT
Apr 14th | Kranhalle, Munich, DE
Apr 16th | Molotow, Hamburg, DE
Apr 18th | Cassiopeia, Berlin, DE
Apr 19th | Loppen, Copenhagen, DK
Apr 21st | OT301, Amsterdam, NL