Joy
Devil’s Blues
Shrimper
Occasional tape hiss and the ambiance of everyday life can’t even begin to disguise the unadorned loveliness that bursts confidently out of Joy’s new offering Devil’s Blues. Whereas the album begins with an air of introverted melancholy, it soon explodes with a panoramic and cinematic melding of fragile Nick Drake-esque folk, Appalachian porch songs and the wide open spaces of Morricone’s spaghetti western soundtracks. Intertwining falsettos, string arrangements, bursts of horns and humming guitar strings, Joy’s epic laments are made to get lost in. And I couldn’t help but think as I listened to this platter, “Man oh man, they don’t play our kind of songs on the radio anymore, do they?”
