Big Deal Flip Through Their Old Photo Albums

Lights Out, “Talk”

Videos by VICE

But it’s okay. Life is good because Big Deal are around to remind people who aren’t still in high school what this feels like. Where their first record was an entirely stripped back affair—one acoustic guitar, one electric, and two voices—for the duo’s forthcoming second album, June Gloom, Kacey and Alice have plugged in their distortion pedals and roped in former S.C.U.M. members Mel and Huw as their rhythm section. Because we think they’re cute and they make our heart go boom, we made Joshua Tree-born Kacey and Londoner Alice, go through their old photo albums. Turns out looking cute isn’t something they put that much time into. So really this is just an excuse to delve into their pictorial past.

Alice: At this age I just let my mum do what she wanted, which was put me in dresses. When I got around to choosing outfits it was usually a choice between seven different pairs of dungarees [overalls] in all different colors. I think this was at my fifth birthday. I wanted to cut the cake myself: I thought I was so grown up. My sister Fran, on the right, is wearing her Mini Mouse and tartan leggings. She used to wear those everyday and still wants a pair now.

Kacey: The baby goats on the left were Peanut and Brittle. I had an older goat that I rode in a kids rodeo and I won! Everyone else was riding sheep. I’m also wearing Velcro shoes. I didn’t know how to tie my laces for a long time and to this day I still hate tying my shoes. My main shoe requirement is they have to be loose so I don’t have to tie them, or they’re slip-ons. Parameters are good: you have to work with what you have. Life’s too short. Who has the time to tie laces everyday?
Alice: It really doesn’t take that long!
Kacey: YOLO.
Alice: You Only Lace Once. This is definitely an outfit you’d wear now. But do you think your dad dressed you?
Kacey: Definitely. I think my dad had the same thing on. That was just rodeo clothes. Did you ever have Toughskins? They’re like Sears’ generic jeans. They were really cheap, but super good value. When you first got them, you could hardly walk in them because they were so stiff and thick. My brothers and I used to rip off the leather badge that said Toughskins because we were ashamed of them being value jeans. But everyone could tell what they were because there was this pale patch where the tag used to be.

Wow.

Kacey: This picture is awesome. I think I was 17. That’s what happens when you live in the middle of the desert and you have four older brothers: everything I owned was way too big for me. Look at the size of that! I looked like Charlie Chaplin. At the time maybe it was in fashion? Or it didn’t look as absolutely ridiculous as it does now. I had a lot of hand-me-downs, but maybe it was really mine and that was the way it was supposed to be!

Alice: This was at a house party when I was 14. I was really into oversized plaid shirts and big padded tartan coats. I definitely went through a phase of wearing my hair quiffed up, but it accentuated my giant forehead! When I was 13, I cut my hair short and some boy made some horrible comment about me looking like a man. My hair’s been long ever since. It is like a security blanket. Especially onstage, it’s like a curtain I can hide behind. My hair keeps things feminine so I can dress like a boy and no one gets confused!

Alice: This was at Bestival when I was 15. It was torrentially raining and I was locked out of the van and all my clothes got soaked. The Xerox Teens saved me and gave me a bin bag [garbage bag]. It’s acceptable festival chic though.

Alice: We just had lots of extra large t-shirts left so decided to tie-dye them and then everyone wanted one, so we had to do more. That picture on the right is of Kacey with my sister Fran and everyone thought it was me. Maybe I should just get her to do our press shots from now on. I pretty much copy everything Fran wears.

Pic nabbed from The Lab Magazine.

Alice: This is a picture in my house and those are Fran’s jeans. They’re way too tight because she’s a skinny sister. I wear her jeans and then realize an hour into the night, when I’ve had a meal, that I can’t actually exhale. My other sister was a real emo-goth and when I was about 12, I went up to her room and asked if she could make me cool like her. She took me to Camden market and bought me massive skate shoes, big Criminal Damage trousers, stripy gloves, and a Blink-182 t-shirt. Sadly, there are no photos of that time!

Look at Kacey’s face. Pure joy.

Kacey: That’s Comme des Garçons and it’s the most expensive shirt I’ve ever bought. I’ve only worn it twice and one of those times was when we went to see Arcade Fire and I met David Cross. It’s a good t-shirt, but part of my fashion style is I can’t wear white because it just gets dirty. I always spill something on it. It’s too much pressure! I can only wear it on special occasions, like when I met David Cross. He was so nice and cool and just stoked that someone wanted to talk to him!

Kacey: This is me and our producer [former Test Icicle] Rory Atwell in the studio while we were recording June Gloom. We were recording on a boat and therefore we were rock pirates!
Alice: It was an accident, but it was actually really funny. When they took off their jackets, we all started laughing.
Kacey: That trend didn’t really take off in the way we wanted it to, but there’s still a chance it might pick up!

Kacey: I got this Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt when I was 14, so it’s probably the piece of clothing I’ve had the longest. It’s covered in holes and it’s still so huge. I was definitely into the Pumpkins style before Billy Corgan started dressing like an alien. He wore girls shirts. Alice is always giving me a hard time because I like girls shirts more than guys shirts. Girls get all the good patterns.

Alice: I like to feel liberated onstage. With bare legs you feel like a kid in the summer, like when you could just throw on one little dress and go out and play. I do feel The Strokes had—which is what the Ramones had too—that classic rock ’n’ roll uniform: tired jeans, Converse, and a denim jacket. This also looks really good on girls and I like wearing that onstage because you don’t feel exposed. It makes me feel equal to the boys. Sometimes if I wear a dress onstage, I feel like people are judging the whole thing differently, whereas if you adopt this uniform, you’re taken a bit more seriously.

Alice: The head of our label was like, “You can’t wear that t-shirt, the jellyfish are too distracting and the shirt is so offensive.” It’s Kacey’s favorite shirt! He loves whales too, so he’ll wear anything with a whale on it. Whales are the one thing in the world I’m most scared of. I always have nightmares that a giant whale is coming up underneath me. I like this photo, he’s black like the jellyfish king and I’m all white.

A whale. Killer.

Kacey: Whales are my style icons. They’re badass. Black and white is always in style and they always look cool.

On the set of their video for “In Your Car.”

Alice: We wanted to make a video a bit like Paris, Texas, but we never did, so this black fluffy sweater was our nod to it: the girl in Paris, Texas has a really nice fluffy pink jumper. We also wanted the video to look a bit like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and we thought that shirt Kacey’s wearing looked like something Hunter S. Thompson would wear. We wanted it to feel like we were in costume, as opposed to being ourselves, because we didn’t want to feel self-conscious about having to try and look cool.

Sue Lyon in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of ‘Lolita.’

Alice: As for my glasses, we saw the Stanley Kubrick exhibition while we were in LA and thought the glasses were cool. Also we thought it would be funny because people described us as Lolita-pop when we first came out.

The brothers known as Inc.

Kacey: I like the style of the guys from Inc. because they look really weird. I like it when things are honest. That’s the only thing I care about when it comes to style: when you’re doing something, it has to be because you want to, not because something is fashionable. I really like the idea of doing things because it makes you feel better. With Inc. you can really tell they’re doing it because they want to, not because it’s cool. They’re wearing like fishnets and gelled hair. They look like kindergoths.

Big Deal with new band members, Mel and Huw.

Alice: Here I’m wearing my sister’s shirt, again!
Kacey: I like this picture because I’m wearing my Zelda shirt, which is dear to me. I love Zelda! It was one of those games that was a total escape for me as a kid. I’d come home from school and be itching to play it. What was I escaping from? Ganon. Little nerd joke, there.