THE BIG Moon are coming up on ten years as a band, and the four-piece all female group will look to that milestone next year as they once again grace the stage at Neighbourhood Weekender this year.

The London based band, led by Juliette Jackson, were formed in 2014, a disparate group of mutual friends looking to form a band.

Nine years on, they’ve played multiple Neighbourhood Weekenders, received a Mercury Prize nomination, and NME called their newest album “their deepest, most emotional album yet.”

In speaking to Juliette, the origins of the band are far more straightforward than the complex stories you hope for.

“Basically, I just really wanted to start a band and couldn't find people to be in my band.

So, I ended up asking a load of like friends of friends of friends "Do you know anyone who might play an instrument?" and eventually found these guys. So we're all sort of connected by this kind of giant friendship group, this sort of weird disparate network of people.

I feel very lucky that we all had enough time and energy to be in a band at the same time. You know, one summer we all just kind of came together and practiced together and got on. It's like magical and very unusual when that happens.”

Nearly ten years on, the band finds themselves in a very different stage of their lives.

“The main differences are our friendships are stronger. Like we're basically like family at this point. I have a two year old son and they're all his god mothers. So, we are pretty much related.

But things are also different in the way we work together and record together. We co-produced our last album ourselves.

“We've got closer together and we know what each other wants without saying it.

“Things just feel easier and easier as time goes on. Which is really cool.”

The London-group recently played the BBC 6 music festival in Manchester, supported by an all-female choir called ‘She-Choir Manchester’.

They performed two songs, the first of which ‘Satellite’s’, which Juliette has previously said she wrote “experiencing morning sickness and could barely get off the floor… I expected to feel sick but I didn’t expect to feel breathless and flimsy and weak.” The second, ‘2 Lines’, was about the feeling of seeing a positive pregnancy test.

“It's been really overwhelming actually, to be honest, because I think going through pregnancy and birth and having a newborn is such a personal experience it is so like, isolating but also very universal.

"So, it's nice to like sort of sing these songs and kind of show people how I was feeling about it and then I got a lot of feedback from other people who've been through it who say that they understand and feel the same way.

And also, when we played the BBC 6 music festival, we played with a choir, I think it was 30 of them. Hearing that many people's voices, and a lot of them were parents as well - they had told us beforehand, what the songs meant to them. It just gives the songs a whole new meaning.

“And it's not just my experience now, you know, they become a whole other thing during the lives of others.”

The Big Moon are playing ‘The Big Top’ stage on Sunday of Neighbourhood Weekender 2023