“Big Legs are too up close and personal for words. As a matter of fact it’s the words you can’t shake, misconstruing them for your own anxieties and nervous habits. There’s no release in the keening sawing rhythms and there will be no relief for you. But now you have Big Legs with you, two of them. Neither skyscrapers nor redwoods, Big Legs make monuments to perspicacity and anxiety. The roar you hear is the crowd in the world’s largest comedy club laughing, wheezing and lunging for the door. The humour is brighter and sharper and just plain smarter. You’ll be back for more punishment I’m sure.”
ARTO LINDSAY (musician, DNA, Lounge Lizards, Golden Palominos)
“Mechanical, streamlined and fortuitously elegant. Big Legs’ record is awesome. They avoid becoming a parity product.”
DEAN SPUNT (No Age)
Big Legs is the eponymously titled debut full-length LP by Big Legs, released in an edition of 300 copies on Junior Aspirin Records. Big Legs are a two-piece band from New York; the right leg is Mark Beasley, the left is Dan Fox. Their sound is informed by their formative years at British art schools, by the attitudes and sounds of post-punk and dance music. Slow, menacing beats and snatches of wistful melody – even the occasional quote from a song by ABBA or The Smiths underpin Big Legs’ scathing and often surreal lyrics, which satirize the disappointments of 21st century culture and the easy traps of nostalgia. In Big Legs can be heard echoes of the dark humour of The Residents, Ween, Bongwater, Psychic TV and King Missile.
Big Legs was formed in 2011 by writers Mark Beasley and Dan Fox, and the duo is currently based in the increasingly luxurious and consequently unaffordable New York City. Their sporadic but indelibly memorably live shows range from The Kitchen – New York’s oldest and most influential avant-garde performance venue – through to a show in front of thousands on the bank of the Black Dragon River in Northern China, marshaled by armed police and a thousand children waving rattles and placards that read ‘Rock You.’
ASP 025