EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Big Deal

Kacey Underwood and Alice Costelloe from Big Deal are the perfect duo. Underwood’s witty humor and Costelloe’s laid-back persona could be the reason they work so well together. Their compelling harmonies and acoustic and electric guitar are just a few reasons to keep an eye out for their upcoming debut album Lights Out. Kacey and Alice chatted with The Owl Mag about their album, favorite music, what they do in their down time, and a weird experience at their first gig.

The Owl Mag: Your debut album Lights Out is being released September 8th in the UK and mid-October in the US; what are your feelings on that?

Kacey Underwood: We don’t know. We’re definitely nervous. You want people to like it. We were happy with the record we made.

Alice Costelloe: Really happy that we’ve only been together for a year; and to have an album come out after having only been together for a year is great. When there are two people it’s easy to get stuff done. And that’s why we’ve only been together for a year, but we’ve got an album coming out. Because there are just two of us and we can get stuff done together.

The Owl Mag: What do you hope to accomplish with this album?

Kacey Underwood: The goal of this album is just making it so anyone who wants to hear it can hear it, and make people want to come to a gig. Because that’s basically what we’ll be doing for the next year, is just touring and playing. Hopefully people will hear it and want to come down and see what it’s like.

Alice Costelloe: We pretty much have the same goal in mind, wanting to have people come down and hear us. The album is to give a good impression.

The Owl Mag: How long did it take you to produce this album?

Kacey Underwood: We recorded the record in seven days.

Alice Costelloe: We wrote a lot of it in the summer last year and finished it before we went in to record.

The Owl Mag: How would you describe your sound?

Kacey Underwood: Were kind of hoping that some journalist, like yourself, will help us do that.

The Owl Mag: What is the craziest or most bizarre thing that has happened at one of your shows?

Kacey Underwood: Our first gig, our very first song that we ever played, the sound woman started playing an electro CD over the top of us. We just kept playing until she realized and she pressed stop and we kept playing. And then we knew that we would be okay. If you can handle music being played over the top of you then you can handle anything.

Alice Costelloe: That was the strangest gig experience we’ve ever had for sure.

The Owl Mag: When you’re not making or playing music, what are you doing?

Kacey Underwood: We like movies. We’re like any other kids we like movies and music and we like to play bad mitten, and that’s about it.

Alice Costelloe: We like to eat ice cream and go see the bands we like.

The Owl Mag: Which bands do you like?

Alice Costelloe: We recently saw Arcade Fire and they were really great, and we are going to see The Strokes and that will be really great.

Kacey Underwood: I’ve been listening to a band called P.S. I Love You, they’re pretty cool. I can never remember once asked that question.

The Owl Mag: What is your favorite song to play live?

Kacey Underwood: For me it just changes night to night, I’m very fickle. Some days I like the songs and some days I don’t.

Alice Costelloe: Well we just bought some new pedals and I’m liking playing “Locked Up” now because we can get the sound from the album, the really sick, heavy sound.

The Owl Mag: Do you think your fans have a favorite song?

Kacey Underwood: Well I don’t know. I don’t know if we have fans yet. Hopefully they love them all equally like children.

The Owl Mag: Where would you place yourselves in the music scene?

Kacey Underwood: Right there on the bottom of the rung, you know we’re babies. The music scene is crazy, bands start up each and every day.

Alice Costelloe: I mean were definitely just starting out in the music scene. We’ve just got our first album coming out and things will probably change.

The Owl Mag: Are there any bands/artists that you draw inspiration from?

Alice Costelloe: We definitely both were inspired by the Arcade Fire album, Suburbs, when it came out last summer. I think generally were just inspired by what was going on in our lives, it might be a dream you have or a movie, or real life.

Kacey Underwood: She took the words right out of my mouth.

The Owl Mag: If you could chose any band to tour with, who would it be?

Kacey Underwood: I would like to tour with probably a band I would like to see every night. I’m going to have to go with a band with fun people in it. Black Lips would be fun. They seem like they would be fun.

Alice Costelloe: I think MGMT would be cool to tour with. Because I really like their records and I would like to see them live every night.

The Owl Mag: Where have you had the most fun performing so far?

Alice Costelloe: I think we had a really great time in Berlin, the crowd was so responsive, it was nice playing outside of the UK and having people be appreciative of it.

Kacey Underwood: I would agree with Alice I really liked Berlin and we’re going to go to some coastal cities in the UK soon.

The Owl Mag: Do one of you usually write the songs, and the other writes the music, or is it a mutual effort on both parts?

Alice Costelloe: It’s a communal effort it depends on each song but we both write on each song.

The Owl Mag: Where/when is your next show?

Alice Costelloe: Our next show is Reading Festival, a big music festival England.

Kacey Underwood: August 28th.