Big Red Announce Debut Album Big Sur And Share New Single ‘Mission St.’
The Joseph Scarisbrick-led project will release their debut album this October before heading out on their first UK headline tour in November.
Big Red, the project led by The Orchestra (For Now)’s Joseph Scarisbrick, have announced their debut album Big Sur, arriving on 30 October. The news comes alongside new single ‘Mission St.’ and details of a UK headline tour this November.
Initially created as an outlet for Scarisbrick’s songwriting outside The Orchestra (For Now), Big Red has since developed into a three-piece featuring drummer Charlie Hancock and bassist/vocalist Millie Kirby. The group made their debut earlier this year with ‘Isn’t He Funny’, followed by a headline show at Third Man Records’ Blue Basement.
Written between London and Santa Cruz, California during the opening months of 2025, Big Sur centres on ideas of distance, longing and the romanticisation of somewhere that always seems just out of reach. The album was recorded in Devon last April, with the three musicians playing live together and using very few overdubs or additional studio elements.
That sense of immediacy carries into new single ‘Mission St.’, one of the earliest tracks Scarisbrick wrote for the project and already a regular part of Big Red’s live shows. Moving between cyclical picked guitars and heavier power chords, the track disguises a considerably darker story beneath its energetic exterior.
Scarisbrick describes it as “a sad song masquerading as an upbeat loud banger”, explaining that it deals with watching someone from his childhood gradually disappear from his life without being able to help them.
“I don't know how he is doing but I hope he is ok,” he adds.
California runs throughout Big Sur, although increasingly as an imagined destination rather than a physical one. Its title takes its name from the stretch of Californian coastline, with the journey towards it becoming a recurring idea across the record. By its conclusion, that promised destination remains unreached.
Musically, Big Red draw from Americana and the storytelling traditions of country music without leaning into its nostalgia. Scarisbrick has also moved towards more direct and confessional writing than the literary references that characterised The Orchestra (For Now)’s Plan 75 and Plan 76 EPs.
The stripped-back approach continued during recording. Aside from occasional second guitar parts and sparse additional instrumentation, Big Sur captures Scarisbrick, Hancock and Kirby performing together in the room. Even the emotional aftermath of the final take remains: the closing moments of ‘Lost (And Found)’ capture Scarisbrick and Hancock crying as the recording comes to an end.
Following the album’s release, Big Red will head out on their first UK headline tour in November, including dates in Edinburgh, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Brighton, London and Southampton. Before then, the band will appear at End Of The Road Festival on 5 September and Brighton’s Mutations Festival on 24 October.
Big Sur is released on 30th October.
