Big Sur

Big Red is the solo writing vehicle of Joseph Scarisbrick, first imagined as a home for songs beyond The Orchestra (For Now). It has since grown into a three-piece with drummer Charlie Hancock and bassist and vocalist Millie Kirby.

Written between London and Santa Cruz in early 2025, then recorded live in Devon that April, Big Sur is an album of distance and longing. California hangs over the record less as a real place than a mythic state of mind, hoped for and finally out of reach.

Musically, it sits in a deconstructed Americana space, drawing on country’s storytelling without leaning on nostalgia. Where Scarisbrick once packed songs with references across The Orchestra (For Now)’s Plan 75 and Plan 76, here the writing is direct, confessional and strikingly exposed.

That honesty carries through the recording: three musicians playing live in a room, with minimal overdubs and almost no studio gloss. A second guitar appears now and then, a cowbell here and there. On closing song Lost (and Found), the final moments catch Charlie and Joe crying after the take.