Big Red - Big Sur

Big Red is the solo writing vehicle of Joseph Scarisbrick.

Originally conceived as a home for songs that sat outside the world of his other project, The Orchestra (For Now), the band 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.

At its 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. 

The writing is confessional; often opening up in brutal honesty.