Big Red – the solo writing vehicle of Joseph Scarisbrick – have shared a new single titled “Man Bites Dog”. The track comes ahead of their highly anticipated debut album Big Sur (out this Friday), and follows the band’s first three singles “Isn’t He Funny?”, “Mission St.”, and “Lost (And Found).” The band also recently made their first festival appearance with a packed out set at End Of The Road Festival.
Originally conceived as a home for songs that sat outside the world of his other project, The Orchestra (For Now),Big Red has evolved into a three-piece alongside drummer Charlie Hancock and bassist/vocalist Millie Kirby. Written between London, UK and Santa Cruz, California during the first months of 2025 and recorded live in Devon that April, Big Sur is an album about distance and longing.
Tying into the themes explored on the band’s debut single “Isn’t He Funny?” – performance and inadequacy – the new track “Man Bites Dog” moves between pensive building sections and maximalist strummed chords, underpinned by joint vocals between Scarisbrick and Kirby.
Speaking on the track Scarisbrick says, “I’d written it the night before we got to the studio. We had a free evening in Devon, and we worked out the arrangement. It came together incredibly fast and we tracked it the next day. It’s a track which slightly readjusts the framing of the record, and the closest I came to introducing a “character”.
At the album’s centre lies an imagined journey to the cliffs of Big Sur. The destination itself becomes increasingly elusive. Across the record, California exists less as a real place than a state of mind – something hoped for, mythologised and, ultimately, unreachable. By the album’s closing moments, Scarisbrick arrives at a stark realisation: “We never made it to Big Sur / I guess this kind of looks the same.”
Big Sur inhabits a world of deconstructed Americana. Its songs draw on the narrative instincts of country music while rejecting nostalgia and sentimentality. Where Scarisbrick’s previous work frequently relied on dense references and literary allusion across The Orchestra (For Now)’s Plan 75 and Plan 76 EPs, Big Sur takes a more direct approach. The writing is confessional; often opening up in brutal honesty.
That sense of exposure extends to the recording itself. Big Sur was captured entirely live by three musicians in a room, with minimal overdubs and virtually no studio embellishment. A second guitar appears occasionally; a cowbell surfaces here and there. Otherwise, what remains is the sound of a band playing together in real time.
The result is an album defined by immediacy. There are few places to hide. Every hesitation, every crack in the voice, every moment of tension remains intact.
Following the album’s release, Big Red will play their first headline tour. Dates are as follows:
Big Red live dates:
10 Nov – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s
11 Nov – Leeds, Hyde Park Book Club
13 Nov – Bristol, Ears to the Ground
14 Nov – Manchester, Mood Swings
15 Nov – Sheffield, Sidney & Mathilda
18 Nov – Brighton, Rossi Bar
19 Nov – London, Greyhound
20 Nov – Southampton, Heartbreakers
10 April – Bristol, Outertown
Tickets are on sale HERE
Big Sur is out 30th October – preorder HERE
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