If Big Bill were from Bristol, Brighton, or London, NME would’ve long ago run articles effusively praising their peculiar strain of punk and proclaiming them the next big thing. That is to say, the Austin quartet, est. 2011, was ahead of the curve on the more recent UK sensation of quirky punk with dissonant guitar and interesting talking-singing vocalists sharing cross-eyed ruminations about life. Of course, Big Bill is palpably weirder than much of that scene.
On Public Freakout Compilation, the group’s first album since 2017 and best overall collection of songs, BB still inhabits that mode here and there – notably the pummeling avian metaphor on “Hawk” – but hits their highest peaks with diversified sounds. The unusually patient “Picture” resembles an apocalyptic Velvet Underground, while “Almost Everybody” is an alt-y nugget of post-grunge power-pop that would’ve contended as a single on Weezer’s Blue Album.
The band – whose gleefully abnormal sound early on approximated SpongeBob singing for the Dead Milkmen, and who have since honed their stage-diving act so pointedly that civilian clothes won’t do (their stage getups could be criminal wardrobe from the Sixties Batman show), have their own public freak-out Friday at Hotel Vegas. Art-pop cranium-crackers Calliope Musicals and thrash punk unit Bondbreakr open.
—1292031— Kevin Curtin
