The ‘Twenty Four' EP by Big Decision
Review
Big Decision, whose 1991 song "Head Over Heels" appeared on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Three' (I hope you enjoyed that), have hitherto fallen into the category of artists featured in that series of "brought to your attention in case you missed them at the time but not likely to make any new music".
That's all changed & like other groups we have removed from that category like Some Kinda Earthquake or Eight Miles High, here they are back again with a new EP called ‘Twenty Four' which is released on 2nd April
The three component tracks ("Looking After Number One", "Never Had It So Good" and "Shake The Feeling") were recorded in November 2024 at Hedgeside in Leicestershire: which presumably generated the EP title.
What is most gratifying given the passage of time is that the original lineups of Matthew Scholes on vocals, Simon Ward (bass guitar), Craig Shelton (guitar) and successive drummers Darrell Johnson (1989-91) and Gary Cody (1991-92) managed to reconvene: something many other reformations cannot alas wholly achieve for a variety of reasons, many of them unfortunate. (Eagle eyed readers may spot a personnel link between this list and the two bands cited above… the significance of which I leave to you to tease out). I have no idea of the size of the decision each took to rejoin the fray, so any weak pun around their name won't materialise thankfully, but the result very sounds as if they did just enjoy playing together again & creating something new.
I'll be honest, with one exception, I am not aware of what these musicians have been up to for thirty years, but on this evidence they've been keeping their hands in one way or another: they seem to have taken up where they left off back in the day. In fact I might perceive some increase in confidence in the execution compared with "Head Over Heels".
I'd say that in relation to "Looking After Number One" (not as you might wonder, without hearing it, a Boomtown Rats cover): a perky & hook driven pop song which fits in well with the culture of 2025: if you were expecting some sort of late 1980s nostalgia fest in these songs, then you'd be mistaken. This EP is not a quest for lost glories let alone an exercise in recreating their youth: this is band living in today.
Just as the previous title evokes another cultural touchstone, I suppose "Never Had It So Good" reminds us of something else: though again this is not a tribute to Harold MacMillan but instead an urgent "life as people living to this record might live" song of the sort deeply embedded in British (especially English) music DNA and popularised by artists from The Kinks to Madness etc & thence to so many more….. in fact this song might well have gone down well in the Mod Revival days
"Shake The Feeling" is perhaps the one out of the trio which doffs a bucket hat a little to their original era: particularly through the words with a little help from the groove centred approach & the drumming style.
This definitely seems to have been a worthwhile exercise for these musicians: no doubt, as I suggested above, the process was a key part of why they did it, but objectively these are three fine new songs which we'd not have otherwise heard and so they vindicate the reunion too, as well as creating a tangible legacy of their existence.
