Band Of Holy Joy - A Place Called Home

  by John Clarkson

published: 2 / 9 / 2014




Band Of Holy Joy - A Place Called Home


Label: Radio Joy
Format: CDS
Understated and balladic new single from the Band of Holy Joy, which focuses on the escalating housing situation in their native London



Review

Fans of the Band of Holy Joy have learnt to expect the unexpected from Johny Brown and his durable group. While their 2013 album ‘Cities of Tales (Vol . 1 and 2)’, a double cassette upgrading and expansion of an unreleased 1985 album, combined lo-fi industrialism and avant-garde experimentalism, their latest album ‘Easy Listening’, which came out in February, was in complete contrast a sublime, orchestral pop record. New digital-only single ‘A Place Called Home’, the first track from a new album pencilled in for next year, finds the Band of Holy Joy changing precedent again, and is a softly crooned, 50’s-type ballad with slow, tingling guitar and keyboard lines. The Newcastle-born Brown has always been an astute social observer, with his adopted city of the last thirty years of London his main target. ‘A Place Called Home’ focuses on the hike there in recent years in rent and housing prices, which have arisen by nearly twenty percent in the last twelve months alone. “Cleaner air/Spectacular views at the things down there that happen on the news/Living and lifestyle close to heart the city/Virus machine/Dreams so pretty,” Brown lilts bitingly early on, and “It’s not where you are going but where you are from that matters around these parts,” he adds later in a spoken word monologue. ‘A Place Called Home’ highlights the fact that traditional working class neighbourhoods such as the East End and Battersea – its landmark power station is shortly to be converted into £2,000 per foot luxury flats and a retail complex - have become havens for the very rich, while those who once lived there, no longer able to afford to do so, have been squeezed far out into the provinces. A torch song to a fading London, as angry as it is understated, ‘A Place Called Home’ is quietly devastating.



Track Listing:-

1 A Place Called Home


Band Links:-

http://www.bandofholyjoy.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/bandofholyjoy
https://twitter.com/BandOfHolyJoy
https://bandofholyjoy.bandcamp.com/



Post A Comment


Check box to submit




Interviews


Interview (2019)
Band Of Holy Joy - Interview
In our fifth interview with them, John Clarkson talks to Johny Brown, Inga Tillere and James Stephen Finn from London-based alternative/indie rock band the Band of Holy Joy about their remarkable latest album, ‘Neon Primitives’.
Interview (2018)
Interview (2015)
Interview (2014)
Interview (2012)

Live Reviews


Tiger Lounge, Manchester, 27/9/2014
Band Of Holy Joy - Tiger Lounge, Manchester, 27/9/2014
Bill Seagrave watches the Band of Holy Joy play an atmospheric and inventive set at the Tiger Lounge in Manchester

Features


(With Moon Under Water and Dream Maps), Water Rats, London, 17/1/2020 (2019)
Band Of Holy Joy - (With Moon Under Water and Dream Maps), Water Rats, London, 17/1/2020
We profile our next London Pennyblackmusic Bands' night which will take place with The Band of Holy Joy, Moon Under Water and Dream Maps at the Water Rats on the 17th January, 2020.
(With the Cathode Ray), Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, 10/12/2017 (2017)
(With the Bitter Springs and Idiot Son), Macbeth, London, 9/1/2015 (2015)


Digital Downloads




Reviews


Brutalism Begins at Home (2017)
Appealing new EP from London-based alternative rock the Band of Holy Joy which has been released on ten inch vinyl and digitally
A Plain Cookerybook for the Working Classes (2016)
An Atlas of Spatial Practice (2016)
Land of Holy Joy (2014)
City of Tales (Vol. 1 and 2) (2013)


Most Viewed Articles






Most Viewed Reviews




Related Articles


Band of Holy Joy/Cathode Ray: Feature (2016
Band of Holy Joy/Cathode Ray - (With Roy Moller), Sebright Arms, London, 15/4/2016
Pennyblackmusic presents three acts from the Edinburgh-based label – The Band of Holy Joy, The Cathode Ray and Roy Moller – at the Sebright Arms on April 15th
Morton Valence: Interview (2014)