The Joy Hotel formed in Spring 2019, their initial rehearsals taking place in the living room of a tenement flat in Glasgow’s East End after Luke Boyce and Emme Woods found a shared love for the duetting harmony found in old country music, as well as the cinematic arrangements prominent in psych and desert rock. The band these days are a seven-piece whose influences range across alt-country and 60s pysch, and comprise Emme Woods (vocals, guitar, keys), Luke Boyce (vocals, guitar, keys), Juan Laforet (keys, guitar + vocals), Jack Boyce (drums), Jack Borrill (bass + vocals), Jenny Clifford (guitar + vocals) and Scott Flanagan (acoustic guitar + vocals) who release their debut album `Ceremony` this month.
The album opens with `I Decline` with Emme heading up the vocals on this hesitant, reflective, and quite cinematic opening salvo that for some reason brought to mind early Fairground Attraction. It appears to be an echo of an existence lived on one`s own terms, not lonely but a loner, nevertheless. It bleeds into `Forever Tender Blue` where co -vocalist Luke leads us into a country-tinged offering.
`First Joy` is pretty haunting with psychedelic tones and lyrics that are a little unconventional. Vocalist Emme Woods has said that `Jeremiah` “is a song for the end of the world from two opposing perspectives; one side welcoming the end, believing God will be there to meet them and judge them mercifully, the other in a state of existential anxiety as the world spirals towards collapse.” It may or may not allude to the prophet Jeremiah who authored the Book Of Kings and was known as the “weeping prophet.” It has a fairly retro feel with detached drum beats and organ keys and is a fairly intense listen.
Themes of indescribable tragedy are explored on `Black Balloon` a ballad like composition that touches on a story about someone losing their baby and helping that person find their way back to health, both physically and mentally. It`s delightfully moving, tender and evocative with a trumpet segment that adds a further sense of poignancy. There`s what sounds like an xylophone that gives an impression of falling tears along with violin tinges that add a certain melancholic texture. We enjoy a hazy instrumental offering that picks up pace in the last sixty seconds with `Rapid Eye Movement`, the phase of sleep in which most dreams occur.
`Old Man’s Eyes` considers old age and the view or perspective it may / might bring, a fairly up-tempo lively arrangement. The co-vocalists really trade off each other on `While You’re Young` a rhythmic melodic number that shares a sort of reminiscence on age.
There`s a kind of brief pallet cleanser with `No Use (In Holding On)` which kind of melds into `Twenty Three (A Comedy) Part 1` which is a pretty introspective musing and blends into the instrumental `Twenty Three (A Comedy) Part 2` which has a wurlitzer kind of ambience before almost halting and ending with a more reflective sensibility.
`Killing Time` has a gentle dreamlike nigh on sixties quality with a poetic spoken word segment just after the midway point delivered by Edinburgh based writer, artist, music-maker, storyteller and spoken-word performer Iona Lee. It then kind of drifts off before aching vocals lead us out. There`s a real reflective melancholia about the final number `Small Mercy`, a stripped back composition with piano and Emme`s enticing vocals. As the bass joins it gains a jazz like tone.
Vocalist Luke Boyce has said that `Ceremony` is twelve songs strung together to form one continuous piece of music. In our minds it’s the soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist. This is probably a better summation of what`s on offer than I could produce. The album runs at a few minutes short of an hour and is pretty diverse and does have a kind of cinematic feel. The subject matter at times is weighty and at others almost indecipherable and musically it moves from fairly intensive extracts to more light-hearted passages but it`s always fairly enveloping.
An album that i`m sure will reveal something fresh each time you return to listen.
Rating 8.5 / 10
