celebrating their 40 years of recordings (part 4)

The Band Of Holy Joy: celebrating their 40 years of recordings (Part 4)

In this concluding part, Martin Gray re-evaluates the Band Of Holy Joy’s most exemplary series of recordings yet, after having signed to Tiny Global Productions, their current label, and expresses total wonder (and indeed joy!) that the group continue to mine such a rich seam of creativity.

Tiny Global Productions : a new era of productivity

After so many years flitting between a plethora of labels, The Band Of Holy Joy finally found their ideal spiritual home in the perfect company of many of their contemporaries when they signed to Tiny Global Productions* prior to the release of their next album in 2017.  It is with this label that they have since flourished, issuing no less than eight further incredible releases to date, making this their longest and most fruitful tenure with any record label in their long illustrious history so far.

*current home to the cream of all of the post punk / mid-1980s UK indie heavyweights such as The Nightingales, HOUSE Of ALL, Mekons’ Jon Langford, Blue Orchids, Wolfhounds/Moonshake frontman David Lance Callahan, Stuart Moxham/The Gist, and Alison Statton & Spike.

First off was a four track EP that was intended to comprise a new trilogy, entitled Brutalism Begins At Home (2017). It features two songs in two different versions per side. The bright guitar-led indie pop of opener Come Home To Me is as straightforward and conventional as things get: it’s a cracking tune with organ, brass and even soulful backing vocals (from guest Lilybud Dearsley) and sounds like Band Of Holy Joy taking on so many of those 1990 UK blues ‘n’ soul acts at their game, and coming up triumphant. It is immediately followed by its instrumental twin, titled Travel To The Far Flung Towns, in what can be seen as a sneaky one-two punch, but then it fades out to the sounds of Stereolab-esque burbling analogue electronics.

Things get slightly more raucous on the flip: Removal Man which begins in boisterous fashion with fuzzy guitar and then, after a pause, in comes Johny relishing his role as site boss doling out instructions: ‘Job on the brutalism estate / arrive at the entrance 8am, prompt / pandering the supervisor to gain access / take lift to the third floor / not sure what we find when we get there / enjoy it now, all life is here / tomorrow, this may disappear!’. His proclamation in the chorus of ‘I am a removal man’ is backed with droll ‘who are you? who are you?’ chants from the supporting cast.  It’s obviously a deeply sarcastic swipe at the detested city bailiff, on a mission to depose and displace yet more unwitting victims and leave them to their grim fates, and to hell with their rights basically.

Its instrumental version, titled I Got This Job On The Brutalism Estate, then follows  – stripped down almost to its dub components, with the driving bass and trumpet dominating. Rarely has a tale dealing with such a degrading societal issue as eviction sounded so perversely jaunty. But perhaps that is the intention – to show exactly how passionless, cruel and sadistic bailiffs can be when they go about their business in such callous, cavalier fashion – almost as if relishing the cruelty they mete out on a regular basis.

It’s an intriguing little preface of sorts – if quite atypical of Band of Holy Joy – for the forthcoming full-length which will follow on its tail in a matter of months. But before its arrival, there was yet another box set that was being readied by Tiny Global Productions. At long last, all of the Flim Flam-era material that the Band Of Holy Joy had – to this day – not fully issued on any physical digital format (CD) was being released as a multi-disc boxed set, after being remastered and repackaged.

The Clouds That Break The Sky saw its official release at the end of July 2017. Comprising three CDs and a booklet in a clamshell box, it collects together all of the Band Of Holy Joy recordings between 1985 and 1987: single A and B sides (Disgust, Who Snatched The Baby? Rosemary Smith), the Big Ship Sails mini-LP, their debut LP More Tales From The City, the related live outing When Stars Came Out To Play, plus a smattering of previously unreleased bonus extras (alternative versions and live takes of singles and album tracks). It neatly wrapped up all of those loose ends after the best part of three decades.

Mere months later in October came the fourteenth Band Of Holy Joy studio album proper, Funambulist We Love You (2017)*, intended as the second part of the trilogy, whose primary lyrical content held up a mirror to the less than pleasant state of the country as it became immediately after the June 2016 Brexit vote caused seismic shockwaves of incredulity among some of the populace.

*Funambulist is a tightrope walker. It’s a good allegory in the context of much of the lyrical concerns on this album: troubled times and humanity seemingly ‘balancing on a knife-edge’ as it currently teeters perilously towards disaster whichever way it falls, be it left or right.

Things kick off without even the need for an intro: A Revivalist Impulse is a litany of all of the virtues that appear to have now been relinquished (‘scientific rationalism / arch romantic mysticists / the heaving Mecca Ballroom downtown / The golden age of spirit and soul’), delivered in an earnest call-and-response with the same repeated phrase of ‘..bring back those days’ answering Johny’s impassioned exhortations. It’s a wry lamentation of the old values and respected institutions that once made our societies ‘great’: ‘All those times we left behind / How they were better days’. But even here there’s room for a mocking quip or two: ‘In every dream home another bloody Art-ache.’ (ha! Bryan Ferry finally appears in pun-tastic fashion!) and ‘Courtney Love and the heroic quest.’. All this is presented within the four-and-a-half minute confines of an assured and breezy indie pop tune.

To Leave Or Remain which follows is another track which clearly addresses our own shortcomings post-Referendum. Johny’s almost resigned tones here reflect the more sedate pace of this lovely trumpet-led track which touches upon the breakdown of a relationship and places it in direct parallel with a couple voting different ways over the most potentially divisive of issues. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination just how much of an emotional wrench the outcome would be as lives become irreparably torn apart.

One of the bleakest – yet plainest and most unambiguous – set of words form the basis of album centrepiece, and another track railing over the Brexit fallout, The Song Of Casual Indifference, whereby it’s clear that our slide towards political Armageddon and humanitarian disaster is down to that great elephant in the room that is mass apathy. In this, the execrable diaper-soiling tantrump-throwing tango toddler gets a namecheck where he is ‘laughing on your TV screen’, reminding us how the world will forever be a fucked up place whilst he still steals vital oxygen, but in each chorus Johny repeatedly insists ‘You’re going to walk away from me / What can I do to make you stay, away?’ like he wants to consign them all to history. The track may run at a subdued pace but right at its fade it speeds up like it’s chasing itself out of the room and as far from sight as possible.

Existential fragility and hyper-awareness of an uncaring broken world courses through A Lonesome Dove where the words of the refrain ‘I don’t much pray to a God above / But I’m still out there looking for love’ strike deepest, whilst A Connecting Ticket sees the narrator feeling desperation in his desire to check himself out from a world that’s become soulless and inhumane through all the dumbed-down modern trappings that have rendered most of the populace conformist clones, totally bereft of empathy or critical thinking.

Band Of Holy Joy’s core musicians – James Stephen Finn, Mark Beazley, Peter Smith, and new additions Steve Hands (drums), and Peter Robinson (trumpet) – are all on imperious form throughout the album, backing Johny’s distinctive half-spoken and half-sung vocal delivery. Nothing is overplayed just for histrionic effect – a sense of subtlety and warmth pervades almost every track. Their versatility shines on The Song Of Passionate Intensity – which consciously nods to Phil Spector’s Wrecking Crew, creating a suitably retro vibe as Johny recounts a tragic tale of a love (a singer?) who ended her own life but still continues to reminisce fondly on her devil-may-care worldview during their times together.

A Beautiful Cat is a touching and heartfelt elegy to an un-named kindred spirit who shared the same sort of worldview as the narrator and believed in the same values (‘I raise my glass with love / to a beautiful cat…who lived for the freedom / and the smile in the joy of the dance of the dream’) in a world filled with bigots and the politically destitute, but is tragically taken away in either unjust or mysteriously unresolved circumstances.

Funambulist We Love You closes with the title track which appears to recount the love of a friend who enjoyed living life dangerously and taking risks (hence the tightrope analogy that runs through the lyric). It starts in reflective mode but soon swells to a measure of excitement when the chant of ‘we hope you don’t fall’ assumes more symbolic significance in mind of the perils that may lie ahead. But it could just as equally be about a soul who’s done with the world and wishes to go out with a bang – with spectators looking on in concern, thus leaving all interpretation open-ended.  As this lovely track fades into the distance, we hear, tantalisingly, a beautiful piccolo trumpet coming in right at the final seconds… leaving one to ponder why it couldn’t have been allowed to run for a bit longer – maybe even a full minute – so we could luxuriate in its enchanting tones.

That little minor quibble aside, it’s clear that the Band Of Holy Joy have once again pulled off another understated masterpiece, weaving their usual magic in these eight brilliantly-executed songs.

The eighteen month gap between Funambulist We Love You and Band Of Holy Joy’s next album Neon Primitives which followed in June 2019 was filled with two further double CD-Rs. First was the truly fascinating ‘now-and-then’ document with the intriguing title Electric Songs Of Faith And Devotion (March 2018 – curiously written as Electronic Souls Of Fate And Deviation on the artwork cover) which is split into ‘Media’ CD1 and ‘Myth’ CD2. The first contained newly created compositions reflecting on ‘life, faith and death’ in present day London, whilst the second was a very early band set performed in the crypt of a London church around 1983 and again showcased the primal and unnerving electronic noise incarnation of the band.

The second release (the seventh so far) was titled A Blue Book Of Dark Nights: Camden And Southend 91/92 and was issued in late August 2018. CD1 once again showcased unreleased material from the archives (circa 1991) and CD2 was another BOHJ live performance at Southend Esplanade, again in 1991, which debuted many songs that would be released on Tracksuit Vendetta the following year as well as a few old favourites and even a handful of new songs that never previously saw the light of day.

The third in the trilogy of albums focusing on post-Brexit Britain, Neon Primitives, was released in early June, again to great critical acclaim. Featuring virtually the same line up as before (minus trumpet player Peter Robinson this time), it seemed now that the Band Of Holy Joy were well and truly on a creative roll, with each subsequent new venture gaining more praise from all corners, and further strengthening the notion that their amazing productive streak makes a complete mockery of that old phrase ‘diminishing returns’ when considering artists who have been extant for several decades. If anything, the Band Of Holy Joy’s music seems to be getting ever more relevant and indispensable with increasing years.

Unlike its warmer-sounding predecessor Funambulist We Love You (Johny always avowed that he never liked making the same Band Of Holy Joy album twice), Neon Primitives is a spikier, more eclectic beast, filled with skillful shifting moods and textures. It starts quite boisterous and in-yer-face, as if confronting enemies and trying to stare them down, but it’s then offset with more reflective and subtly tender moments serving as a calming antidote to what’s just gone before. The sequencing is impressive: the urgent, electrified rush of grimy bass-driven Lost In The Night literally accosts you in the street, like a remonstrating stranger colliding with you and making you jump out of your skin, then pausing to regain composure before resuming the attack. And this opening track lasts barely 100 seconds.

Listen to all of Neon Primitives on YouTube:

The pace is maintained with The Devil Has A Hold On The Land, a rousing track – originally built from just an impromptu loose jam – and one of the most addictively catchy Holy Joy songs yet. Opening with the sound of an organ, the song kicks off in cocksure fashion before Johny comes swaggering in with his spoken sermon, admonishing those who stand by allowing the world in which we live to be held to ransom by the rich, the toxic and corrupt, the despotic sociopaths, the uncaring, egotistic narcissists, the unprincipled …. need we go on? It’s truly close to the heart – and bone – and the conviction with which he repeats the refrain of the title means that nagging chorus will stick in your head for days afterwards.

Then, by complete contrast – Band Of Holy Joy excel in musical sorcery – the mood and tempo changes abruptly on So Sad, a beautifully sparse rendering of a torch ballad by American actor, filmmaker, musician (and later model) Vincent Gallo. Now I have to confess, not being a film person at all, I know next to nothing about him, much less even his music career (he released his last album on Warp Records) which sadly evaded my admittedly narrow musical interests around the turn of the 2000s. Johny’s soulful delivery here is a nice surprise, especially for those who think that his trademark tremulous holler is the best he can manage in the vocal stakes (they’re wrong).

A couple’s longed-for escapism to a new domestic idyll, which ultimately ends up going sadly awry when ructions inevitably ensue forms the basis of the passion-drenched Ecstasy Snowbirds, whilst the 50 second intermission that is Take Heed Calumniators is a righteous swipe at the way defamy, malice and slander are now so commonplace (given how social media virtually normalises it), Johny relishing his soapbox moment amid a noisy fuzz-punk backdrop. This is contrasted again with the pleasant guitar-and-piano laced swing of Some People Have Winged Fortunes, a meditation on the vagaries of the hands of fate and chance, but ending on a note of cautious hope all the same.

Two tracks with complementary themes follow next. Electric Pilgrims and Urban Pagans both exhibit almost Smiths-like inflexions in the guitar and bass (but that is where any further resemblances end), with the former an awakening of sorts as the narrator faces advancing age but with wisdom on his side, chooses to face the future with sanguine awareness instead of resignation, and the latter an upbeat narrative about a city character (named as Al) surrounded by all the most undesirable aspects of the here and now but knows how he can rise above it all and seek ‘a better world as seen through lucid eyes’ because ‘when it’s dark, we will turn and we’ll embrace a different light’.

We Are Sailing To The Island Of Light (the latter theme seems to consciously prevail on side two) is an earnest call to arms for all of the benevolent kindred spirits who share the desire to kick the bad old world of cranks, cynics, destitutes, zeroes and villains into touch to unite and head off for better climes. It closes the album on a defiantly buoyant note: as the track increases in tempo (the sound of a distant intruder alarm can be heard too) it’s almost as if the ship, now crammed with like minded absconders on board, is speeding away into the distance, leaving in its wake just a single slow bass motif and the ambient sound of a gradually-fading drone to simulate the retreating of the tide.

During the remainder of the period between 2019 and 2020, the Band Of Holy Joy’s self-released double CD-Rs continued at roughly three to four month intervals. Just two months after Neon Primitives, item #8 in the series was issued: To Live And Lie And Love And Die In Soho (August 2019), this time comprising a suite of new experimental compositions on CD1 and another 2019 live performance in support of the imminent release of Neon Primitives recorded at the Lexington on CD2. This was followed in November by #9: Europe Is Yours Now, promoted as ‘A magical document of espionage, magnetism and theft.’ CD1 once again comprised yet further new mostly instrumental compositions with sentence-length titles, whilst CD2 was a 2011 live show recorded in Paris around the time of How To Kill A Butterfly.

Come 2020, when the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing extended lockdowns put the kibosh on pretty much everything to do with normal day to day activities and socialising, the Band Of Holy Joy continued to write and record and immerse themselves in their creative ventures – albeit in obvious isolation from one another. Three more double CD-Rs were issued. #10: Town Variations And Municipal Temptations (January 2020) featured ten more new compositions on CD1 and a live show from Cluny, Newcastle on CD2 showcasing some new material from the Land Of Holy Joy album that year as well as older numbers. #11: Neon Runes And Plastic Fortune Cookies (July 2020) comprised new ambient pieces with poetry on CD1 whilst some new songs recorded in sessions for previous albums Paramour, Funambulist and Neon Primitives – but ultimately shelved – formed the bulk of the material on CD2, along with a few Johny Brown solo pieces as well. The final instalment of that year #12: We’re Going To Make The Night What It Is (October 2020) revisits the ‘glory pop years’ again for CD1 – a live performance in Utrecht of the Band Of Holy Joy incarnation from the Positively Spooked era and new acoustic compositions with a Parisian theme written and performed by Johny Brown and James Stephen Finn.

Notes From A Gallery (2021 multimedia installation and webcast)

Meanwhile the Band Of Holy Joy were busy working on what would be their next, sixteenth, album Dreams Take Flight. This was to be a fully multi-media project embracing also an art exhibition and online live webcast (titled Notes From A Gallery) that was held at London’s Whitechapel-based Gallery 46 in February 2021 – during the second lockdown period. There were to be video pieces related to each of the tracks on the album (created by a different commissioned artist), together with a host of guest contributors showcasing their own installations and performances during the four day residency at the gallery. It is a fascinating series of films which inextricably link together the songs from the album and the visuals from the various creative collaborators. There are four live webcasts in total, each roughly an hour in length, and can all be viewed on this YouTube channel here.

For a brief overview of this installation, the Notes From A Gallery Website can be reached here

These live webcasts were a very welcome distraction to the bleakly uncertain times the country was caught up in and emphatically shows how visual art and music are so damned crucial and essential to the morale, mental health and well being of us all, given that that same period of isolation also saw this writer drag himself out of his notorious inertia and embark upon a truly unprecedented ten month spurt of frenzied and sustained creative activity between March and December 2020, amassing more than forty recorded pieces of genre-defying music, thirty-odd A3 graphic poster designs and countless short stories, rhyming verse and other pieces of writing, a prolific period of productivity which has never been repeated to this day once the world gradually opened up again (2021-2022 inevitably saw a decidedly less productive phase!).

Dreams Take Flight -> Everyone Is Searching For Beautiful Things

The arrival of the next Band Of Holy Joy album Dreams Take Flight (June 2021), almost exactly two years after 2019’s Neon Primitives, was much anticipated and sees quite possibly the most richly melodic set of compositions yet from the band, all the more remarkable given the challenging circumstances under which these tracks were initially conceived and recorded – often remotely from one another and of course without the direct social interaction that studio / rehearsal room sessions could offer. A further line-up shift saw new drummer Daryl Holley (Morton Valence) join the fray, with Graham Dowdall (synth, sampler), Barbara Bartz (strings), fellow performance artist Sukie Smith (vocals) and Andy Diagram (trumpet) being the extra contributing musicians.

It’s as if the deeply disorientating and disruptive nature of the pandemic and its two  lockdown periods has made the band even more focused and determined to forge new landscapes. One of the tracks here is indeed titled after their exhibition that was held a few months earlier, Notes From A Gallery, and it sees Johny assuming the role of something approaching a tour guide for the benefit of the curious, as he imparts advice about adopting art as a means of expression and escapism and how crucial it can be for our well being. When he muses ‘I change, is it something you can see / I change, I feel the city change with me …. now that things have gotten that strange.’ we’re prompted to ask ourselves how do we respond to the adverse events which befall us and how can creative inspiration arise from times of uncertainty and austerity?

Listen to tracks from the whole album on YouTube:

There’s a cinematic quality to a lot of the sounds on this album, a lushness and depth that might have not been quite so apparent on at least half of its predecessor Neon Primitives. Many tracks feature the dulcet trumpet tones from guest Andy Diagram (also once part of the band James) and divine guest vocals from Sukie Smith. The album’s themes touch upon the fragility of life, how the post-lockdown period impacted the way people treat one another, rehabilitation, creativity and art in all its redemptive powers, and ruminating on the utter futility with which disharmony, wars and conflicts continue to rage on regardless.

Fittingly, on opener This Is The Festival Scene, the album picks up where the last one left off – on an ‘island of light’ (to which Johny and co. previously sailed towards) but this time we are dropped into a dysfunctional landscape of the aforementioned festival where all manner of crazy hedonistic shit is taking place (‘cars are overturned, people are mugged, others rap / at the start of the weekend, the stage is set on fire’, and, towards the end things get grimmer still: ‘nine bodies found trampled to death under eight hundred thousand plastic water bottles’). The track has great spy-theme plucked guitar and dub-style inflections and is a bleakly satirical send up of total utter bedlam and Johny’s comical overwrought delivery, augmented by Sukie Smith’s female reporter’s voice adding further deadpan commentary, merely accentuates the absurdity.

This is a very wordy album – there are lots of texts this time, almost as if in awareness of the fact that the album was recorded amid all the accompanying anxieties about the world in the grip of a new unforeseen crisis, so there was more time to fill with lyrics. A Leap Into The Great Unknown has a similar spoken narrative about chasing one’s dreams and escaping the dreary and the mundane set against a bright brash musical backing but then is offset with a truly great chorus (‘we’ll both face that one shadow together / eternity can be ours forever’). Two songs in and the album already sounds like their strongest one yet.

The opening guitar of That Magic Thing for a few seconds made me think of Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars (thank fuck it wasn’t though). It continues the winning streak of Johny monologues pondering on the notions of passionate relationships against top notch melodic arrangements and this time has Sukie Smith doubling up with Johny in a shared euphoric chorus chant of ‘Psychomagic!‘ ending in the closing refrain of ‘love is the healing force / love is the thing that will heal all’. Similar themes continue on the earnest entreaties of next song When Love Is Not Enough which, coupled with more gorgeous trumpet from Andy Diagram, is another highlight.

On Set Romance is another great track which in its verses owes a musical debt to both The Church’s wonderful lost 80s classic Under The Milky Way and also The Cure’s Lovesong but conceals within more convoluted tragic/romantic twists and turns. The album’s longest and most ambitious track This Rhythm Of Life starts with beautiful languid guitar and piano and sees Johny taking umbrage at societal ills (‘this is a city I hate / criminal aspersion cast in my association’) and, amid the disintegrating backdrop of urban dishevelment, and escalating tension in the music, he questions his own ideals (‘what can I hope to change? / what will I ever achieve? / if you always do, what you’ve always done / you’ll always get, what you’ve always got’).

By the time A New Clear Vision arrives, we’re entering a more serenely philosophical mind state (the gorgeous dreamy reverb of the instrumentation again complements things nicely) as Johny pays tribute to a loved one through the most achingly poetic turns of phrase yet on the album (‘the heavenly spheres come in contact with the earth and our love is saved / I will journey untold miles to find a mythical ark / bring back a fabled icon that glows in this nuclear dark’).  Through ravaged manscapes, real beauty ultimately shines through. It’s a touching and comfortingly eulogic way on which to end the album.

The accompanying double CD that was issued five months after this album, Everyone Is Searching For Beautiful Things (November 2021), was effectively the same format to the dozen double CD-R sets the Band Of Holy Joy self-released up to this point, but this time officially made available through Tiny Global Productions. CD1 contains radical (and completely re-titled) ‘re-imagined’ reworkings of the original album, in some cases based on the instrumental interludes that graced the four online live webcasts, whilst CD2 featured a live concert from the 2021 tour supporting Dreams Take Flight.

Inevitably, as a result of the band’s unfettered creativity, some of these reinterpretations are rendered almost unrecognisable to the extent that they could conceivably be brand new compositions, and indeed some are. The Walk To The Gallery – and its longer closing counterpart here The Walk From The Gallery – are obviously two different and more spaced-out takes on the original album track, effectively used as the intro and outro music on the four webcasts. Tanners Bank is like a soundtrack to a gritty urban drama – high tempo, high octane and with a sense of urgency as heard in its crush collision of fuzz bass, wailing guitars, electronic dissonance and a chaotic pile-driving rhythm, then ending with some unexpected jazz trumpet tootling. Samples of dialogue taken from films or documentaries act as introductions to many tracks. A Working Class Kid is practically a new song – perhaps recorded at the same sessions, whilst Mohope Head is an intriguing dub experiment with dialogue and other odd samples overlaid atop it and some identifiable elements (Johny’s hollering monologue) from This Is The Festival Scene.

The lengthiest and most experimental piece The Loving Fox, at nineteen minutes long, is an extended new poetry piece by Johny (not on the previous album) against an ebbing and flowing backdrop of synth drones, samples, and other sonic textures and embellishments from James Stephen Finn and Peter Smith. Halfway through, the piece blossoms into a mournful acoustic song, where intriguingly the album titles for both these releases are namechecked, then things return to the experimental dronescapes again before concluding with the sound of two classical string passages overlaid on top of another.  This fascinating composition was very likely originally showcased on one of the webcasts of Notes From A Gallery.

Astral Lodgings adopts the backing track for That Magic Thing and throws on all kinds of dialogue and dub soundscapes, some quite jarring, into the mix, whilst The Lonely Poets opens with some spoken verse before what sounds like another previously unheard song emerges, concluding with a further poem that is completely unaccompanied before an angelic dream-like rendition of Moon River fades in just as the track ends.

Listen to and purchase Everyone Is Searching For Beautiful Things on Bandcamp

Fated Beautiful Mistakes -> Scorched Jerusalem

Unusually, 2022 was a relatively fallow year for the Band Of Holy Joy as there were no interim double CD-R self-releases, although one could of course consider Everyone Is Searching For Beautiful Things as an officially-sanctioned equivalent. But come spring 2023 the band were already teasing the title of their soon come seventeenth album on social media.

Fated Beautiful Mistakes (May 2023) was a logical progression from Dreams Take Flight and continued in the band’s rich vein of form in being an equally accomplished-sounding offering, if even more ravishing and melodious than ever before. The Band Of Holy Joy were now down to just the core trio of Johny, James Stephen Finn and Peter Smith (former key member Mark Beazley now settling on being a contributor on bass, prior to returning to his own projects), along with Andrew Gallop (drums), Barbara Bartz (strings), Terry Edwards (flute, alto sax), Sean Read (tenor sax) and Laura Sampson (backing vocals).

Listen to tracks from the whole album on YouTube:

The album starts with beautiful melancholic opener Lighthouse Keeper, with Johny’s simple and effective poetry where he yearns for someone to be ‘the sparkle in my window, to still the trouble in my soul‘ and to be ‘my path, my step, my guiding light in this dark world’.  There are many equally entrancing moments here, among the finest melodies the Band Of Holy Joy have yet delivered. It’s as if, aside from the familiar tropes dealing with the frequently wayward state of our surroundings, there’s also space for some unabashed love songs and elegies too: New York Romantic being one fine example (complete with a suitably stirring sax solo), the divinely exquisite woodwind-driven sway of Our Flighty Season In The Dirty Sun being another, with its skyscraping sentiments of sheer blissful escapism, and a super-infectious singalong melody to match. It’s one of the most jubilantly upbeat songs the Band Of Holy Joy have ever done.

Two short but sweet instrumental interludes Mersey Ferry On The River Thames and The Curve Of The Bay (both with sea-related titles…coincidence?) serve as unobtrusive markers effectively acting as bridges between the main tracks. The titular Mersey Ferry in question being the truly sad sight of the decaying, rotting hulk of the long neglected and much-loved Royal Iris boat. Self-deprecating feelings bordering on willing submission form the basis of the quite charming Circus Folk (‘I’ll be your sense of the absurd / Subject myself to abject ridicule…..I’ll be your clown’). The following City People could almost be a homage to David Bowie’s Heroes in its structure but is no less inferior for that, whilst A Citadel For A Crooked Soul muses on a life lived and spent doing exactly as one pleases without fear of consequences: ‘I want to live in a yard / where I can play my battered guitar loudly in the sun / and take psychedelics in my own time / and live for passions of the heart’.

An Instagram Moon examines people’s lives being practically acted out via their smartphones. The Full Bloom Of Roses could conceivably be another poetic ode to Johny’s partner as it namechecks Latvian cities Riga and Ogre; it’s short and succinct and features the closing couplet ‘Is peace of mind defined in this simple lovely way / you are my light, this love, you are the eternal flame’ as the song ends on an excited squeal of guitar. The opening lines of final track Babylon Farewell (‘I’m leaving this bad city / I’m moving back to hell’) seem to hint at the narrator wanting to banish his high-falutin’ days spent living life to the max and before he moves on grants himself ‘one last dizzy binge, one fast heathen day, one more pagan rite, one more fuzzy bash’ and, most tellingly of all, ‘one more dippy whippy lippy lash’ and then he will check himself out of the madhouse: ‘to this madly beautiful burned-out thrill of a madly decadent city I say… farewell… for now… for now…’ Which of course, suggests almost unquestionably, that he will be back.

And so, indeed, he will, but we all knew that anyway. Fated Beautiful Mistakes then… yet another impeccable clutch of peacock feathers in their collective cap, another beatific chapter in an astonishing sequence of albums (starting with Funambulist We Love You) that has embarked on an upward trajectory in scope and ambition, each successive instalment surpassing the previous one for sheer breadth of vision and soulful luminescence.

Following on from Fated Beautiful Mistakes, the Band Of Holy Joy’s activities took a brief pause allowing Johny Brown to produce his first ever solo album, Gut Feels, which was released in late January 2024 (see LTW review here). Two further self-released Band Of Holy Joy CD-Rs followed in April 2024 and August 2025, although this time as just single discs. The first was A Sentimental Pose, a collection of acoustic pieces played by Johny and produced by James Stephen Finn. The second release, 60 Minute Data Breach On Haunted Beach, issued on their own Bad Punk imprint, was a collaborative project by the Band Of Holy Joy along with Rothko, Kumo, Farmer Glitch, Traumpatrouille and Howlround and featured eight wildly diverse experimental pieces.

| “The Band of Holy Joy’s righteous indignation remains a bruised but necessary force for good in a messed-up world they’ve made their mission to soundtrack until the bitter end.” 
Neil Cooper, The List (2014) |

The beginning of 2025 would see the release of the Band Of Holy Joy’s most startling collection of new tracks yet, as if to further prove that their hunger for making striking new records that reflect the current times has not diminished one iota. By this point the line up featured new personnel yet again: augmenting the core band featured on the previous album (including Basia Bartz again) were Conor Fensom (bass), Joseph Sergi (drums, percussion), Gil De Ray (chanting), and Jon Clayton (bass, cello, double bass, production).

Scorched Jerusalem (January 2025) is a masterful headfuck of astonishing potency. It’s as if everything that the Band Of Holy Joy had done in the previous couple of decades had been revisited, stripped down to its separate components, then reconfigured and repurposed into even more jaw-dropping new shapes which simply defy all categorisation. What’s even more incredible is that it sounds very little like anything that had come before, but nevertheless on closer listening and examination, the giveaway elements of everything re-appropriated from those previous recordings start making their presence felt.

For example, one can trace in the opener Born To Sin a direct lineage from 1985’s Disgust. You can hear it in the drum machine pattern, the ominous synths and electronics. No guitars. No acoustic instruments. Coming round full circle in effect. Whilst the new 2025 model is more succinct and half the length of its feral precursor in all its unsettling six minute intensity, it’s still quite chilling to behold as Johny Brown sounds almost eerily impassive as his plaintive wail (laced with reverb) admonishes his adversary for all of the sins he has committed, vowing to ‘help him into heaven’ after proclaiming ‘and now you’re going to die / having messed up on the ride’.

Listen to and purchase tracks from the whole album Scorched Jerusalem on Bandcamp:

Obviously, the sentiments here could also easily apply to any sinning perpetrator whose deeds have brought nothing but misery unto others (like we need reminding who!). Stay Toxic is even more venomous and retributory, and coupled with the unrelenting electronic backing (all grinding thumps and caustic analogue scree), Johny’s calmly spoken accusations thrown back at his perceived tormentor or betrayer conclude with him imploring his opponent to do as the song title suggests, as if he has completely given up on him. Two minutes and two seconds later, and it’s done.

The two most intense tracks on the album follow next in quick succession: Nihilistic Ends has a 90 second intro (which sounds like a post-modern spy theme with its throbbing bass and electric guitar figure/violin combo) before Johny’s voice finally appears, intoning yet another sombre, self-flagellating lament from the point of view of a villainous character who has wreaked nothing but despair and treachery on his victims and feeling no remorse or empathy for the trail of carnage that he has left behind. It’s compulsively grim stuff and it reaches a crescendo when Johny’s voice starts escalating in intensity to an anguished shriek as his poisoned character openly surrenders to his wretched come-uppance.

Existentialist Kills continues the theme of war as a means of rejuvenation only after complete destruction (a trait which so many warring despots cling to) and that futile hope that this could all be just a dream, but the reality soon dawns with awful inevitability that is isn’t – and this realisation is what pushes the narrator to screaming his despair at this never ending nightmare.

The title track begins quietly and unfolds into a slow waltz that melodically briefly recalls the beautiful bittersweet paean ‘Leaves That Fall In Spring’ from their 1987 debut album More Tales From The City. Among all of the war-ravaged wreckage within the words here (‘will the guards come with their guns? / will the planes fall from the sky?’), there still exists that powerful urge to keep alive one’s hopes and to seek redemption: ‘…we still have a flame burning inside / we’re not quite done yet / we still dream and desire / we won’t be denied…’ Amid all of the carnage and adversity, one thing that can never be extinguished is the yearning for something positive to emerge from all of this: ‘…if we can transform / I feel there is life for both of us still…’ It’s the sound of resilience and resolute defiance, emerging like poppies growing through craters blasted by landmines.

The shortest track on an already quite brief album (barely 40 minutes long) follows: Dead Romantics starts off curiously like an old Aphex Twin track from 1997 – all wayward skittering drum’n’bass beats and those characteristic woozy bell chimes so beloved of Richard D. James before a five line verse from Johny rounds out the whole thing and the track abruptly stops.

Breivik Island is a thinly veiled and venomous attack on we-all-know-who, as the lyrical digs here are blatantly direct and obvious it leaves the listener in absolutely no doubt as to who the intended targets are. Atop an insistent recurring guitar figure Johny rails at the misguided knuckle-dragging troglodytes who want to set the course of human evolution backwards by several millennia: ‘forget everything / burn all your conscious bridges / bomb all the educational schools / forget love ever even existed / take away the evolving ladder / banish all the poetic writers / confiscate all those noble dreams / destroy whole nations / exterminate the less able / abolish all compassionate thinking’. Being transgressive is now seen as the new norm meriting badges of honour, apparently, and thus fully deserves the rancorous scorn being poured out here.

Remarkably, despite the endless shitshow of modern life being documented with such unrelenting aplomb, there’s still space for an unashamed sing-along pop moment, and this comes courtesy of French Riots, even if the words once again stick defiantly to the template of ‘giving the establishment the finger’: ‘light another cigarette / and let off that flare / this is our future / a beautiful burning style ridden stare…‘

The gorgeous downtempo closing number Playing At Being Sad once again incorporates a conscious nod back to an earlier Holy Joy incarnation wherein the melody, and even a bit of the lyric, directly references the splendid Bitten Lips from 1990’s pop masterpiece Positively Spooked (the bell synth almost reprises note for note the older song’s intro). This tender and meditative number is the sole anomaly on an otherwise implacable set of songs that bristle with sheer righteous rage and fury like no other Holy Joy album before. It provides welcome respite from the tumultuous storm that has preceded it and brings the album to a tranquil conclusion. Yet it still wields within its four minutes considerable emotional weight, looking back with a mixture of yearning, sadness and regret at a life that was lived but still with its share of reckless abandon, lost opportunities, wild fantasies and shattered hopes and dreams. ‘They were nihilistic days / we could only harm ourselves / we cared so much for real it hurt / but the beauty was ours to share’.

Scorched Jerusalem is a truly stunning album that leaves in this writer a lasting impact after the first hearing and shows the Band Of Holy Joy well and truly at the top of their game. So where do they go next from here? Well, to bookend 2025, Johny Brown released his second solo album, the sublime and touchingly nostalgic Dream A Memory Of Home at the very end of the year just before Christmas, just to prove to us all that his deep well of inspiration continues to throw up ever more intriguing works of lovingly crafted art.

Postscript: redemption through music during dark times

Presently we’re enduring what could well be the worst ever times of global unrest, uncertainty, injustice and egregiousness. A world of unholy shit, effectively. I get the impression that even all previous eras of socio-political disharmony and disarray will pale into insignificance when compared to what we’re witnessing unfolding in parts of the world right now, especially in these post-Brexit and post-Covid times and in particular across the great pond. These agents of unremitting gloom and unspeakable horror are having such a profoundly negative and detrimental effect on my state of mental health and well being that I invariably begin to harbour the darkest of thoughts that, for many sentient folks, would be unrepeatable but, for me personally, offer the only means of escape and closure.

In an ideal world, rather like in all the films we see and stories we read, we all would dearly love to wish for the most evil and pernicious villains to get their just desserts and come-uppance, meet their deserved sticky ends and be rightly eviscerated from the planet in spectacular fashion. Sadly, there will never be an ideal world, but instead a real world whose daily routines play out more like a never ending Dystopian nightmare, being enacted and drawn out to ever more unutterably distressing and mortifying extremes. In this unreal world, the villains simply prevail and steamroller their way repeatedly and mercilessly through everything and anything, whilst the rest of us are almost helpless in our catatonic inability to curb the appalling atrocities that the villains continue to wreak upon their own kind.

In the face of such unforgiving and unrelenting barbarity, monstrous savagery and depravity, I have little alternative but to seek solace, comfort, sanctuary and salvation in music and art as the only means of escape from this messed up world, through which I can at least give myself a reason to stick around, hang in there and see in another day. The Band Of Holy Joy, fortuitously (and mercifully) offer me such solace, comfort, sanctuary and salvation, as well as reassurance, hope and even escapism.

I might appear overly dramatic admitting this, but seriously, their music has helped me overcome several devastatingly traumatic events in my past. Johny’s boundless passion and his astute wordsmithery – articulating what I can only readily identify with but somehow feel too hamstrung or emotionally constipated to put into similar words myself – plus his charismatic stage presence and personable charm when witnessed in performance – are an absolute revelation and inspiration, and their artistry has frequently exerted a profound effect on me.

A lot of their music is practically soul music – sung right from the heart. They have songs that mirror every emotion, that much is certain. And this is why the perfectly-named Band Of Holy Joy matter so goddamn much to me. They really are one of the most profoundly extraordinary, singularly magnificent and uniquely idiosyncratic groups ever. We should be rightly blessed to have them share this mortal coil with us. Long may the band’s music continue to enchant, captivate and mesmerise.  Thank you all for reading, but most of all, thank you unreservedly to the Band Of Holy Joy for enriching my life in this way.

All words written by Martin Gray
CD cover assemblage by the author from his own collection

Other articles by Martin can be found on his profile

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Johny Brown’s second solo album  Dream A Memory of Home was released by Skill on 24 December 2026