EP Review: Biig Piig - 'The Sky Is Bleeding'
Biig Piig is one of the many artists that kept me relatively sane last year with her 2019 single ‘Sunny’ a regular visitor to my headphones with its much needed chilled out escapism.
Armed with a new EP ‘The Sky is Bleeding,’ Jess Smyth AKA Biig Piig is back with half a dozen similarly infectious songs which could see her climb to the top of the blossoming alt-pop tree.
‘Remedy’ has some of the most beautifully crafted and well-rounded production I’ve heard since The XX’s debut back in 2009. Pieced together by some irresistible vocals and soothing guitar, it’s a track that’s only disappointment lies in the fact it’s only two and a half minutes long. Any longer and I could quite easily get swept away in it.
Luckily, the rest of the EP carries on at a similar pace and you’re not left longing for songs past, you’re forever in the moment as each one is worth its weight in gold on this EP. Arlo Parks was the big success story of last year with some incredible singles which managed to gain a ton of mainstream radio airplay with the magic ingredient being that they never became tiresome.
On first listen, Biig Piig is more than capable of achieving a similar feat this year and I could imagine a song like the stripped back bass, drum and synth ‘Baby Zombie’ being ever-present on the airwaves this year.
More often than not, the lead single on an EP can stick out like a sore thumb either because it’s better than the rest or because it’s been overplayed but that’s’ not the case here. ‘Lavender’ is just below the centre of the sandwich and its fuzzy pop meets Vegas chapel organ slots in nicely alongside the rest of the EP without appearing a class above or in a league of its own.
At a push I’d say ‘American Beauty’ is narrowly the best song on the EP with its big sounding chorus which arrives as a welcome curveball and adds a new dimension to the mix, but there’s really not much to choose between them at all.
I think I’ve run out of superlatives now, ‘The Sky is Bleeding’ is a brilliant EP and the UK shows alongside Glass Animals later this year should nicely prepare Biig Piig for her own Biig Giigs (sorry…) which should arrive in the near future.
Words by Richard Cobb