On FATED BEAUTIFUL MISTAKES – the new album by The Band of Holy Joy (Tiny Global 2023)

A stuttering violin ushers us into a stately piano as LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S
Melodic refrain claims the heart. To start The Band of Holy Joy’s new album,
A collection of soul-shots and heart-shots; each picture framing the name

Of love’s claim through song art. Singer Johny Brown croons uncertainty’s
Blue as cheeks redden against separation’s cold and the light of his lover
Signalling to him from the dark. The music strengthens and swells,

Like all waves, washing us clean to make classics as the heart’s lonely
Lighthouse calls for the stain of love’s sea to leave marks. You can see
The deep night and wand-stirred clouds, mixed and velvet,

And follow the guiding light of all lovers as this holy band play and preach
About the religion within and of how you can be lost at sea in the city
And a man who can ‘never find the right words to say’ lets love teach.

James Stephen Finn’s guitar paints a scene with it’s string-led sprinkled spillage
In NEW YORK ROMANTIC  in which a ‘gorgeous cascade of pavement hearts
That form a cavalcade’ sees Brown find images from the walls and special calls

Of this city, from ‘phlegm, spleen and matter..to becoming the very star
Of his (own) time. ‘ This is glorious 80s pop, full of shoegaze shimmer,
And something reminiscent of any anthems star-sparked climb; a song

To be sung as you angel up the aesthetic of both place and person,
Chalking ‘a pretty heart on dirty pavement/while shaking my cane’
Top Hat tipping to Astaire, Reed and Warhol, as well as any and all

Holy hipsters that emerge through the mouth from Brown’s mind.
Mark Beazley’s bass and Andy  Gallop’s drums coalesce as they do
On each song and record. From chord to crescendo everything within

Is heart-judged. As Pete Smith’s organ and Basia Bartz’s strings soar
And Terry Edwards’ sax slides through the structure to make the sounds
Which aspire and inspire too. Dark lines smudge. A CITADEL OF

CROOKED SOUL charges in from the mist of mournful chords to insistence
As the Songspeiler wants 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..’ It’s a call as well as an image of freedom
In which the crooked soul as creative is Messianic, almost. An emblem
For an age which wants to be both streamed and then streamlined,

Dared by a dreamer who would rouse a prior time in his toast.
The music points the way home to some private cathedral;
A citadel for the denied who are fighting to ‘dance in this monsoon’

Of a world too soon sold and solved for the mainstream apart from
The mysteries Brown uncovers as they ‘play out under the moon.’
MERSEY FERRY ON RIVER THAMES is a synth-siren call over Finn’s

Guitar picking, with fiddle sailing on musical breeze and bright note.
While OUR FLIGHTY SEASON IN THE DIRTY SUN is swagger and swoon
As sax singing. ‘Don’t go far/Strange as you are’ says the lyric,

Containing as it does so all of the secret joys true love wrote.
There is sway through the sax, just as there is swing and Sinatra,
A jauntiness almost as waters separate from mistakes,

Which fated or not, remain both beautiful and transgressive
As around the ear the air changes because of the choice
This band makes. Thanks to Brian O Shaughnessy’s spotlit production,

Feet-tapping, we’re free to blur the murk which surrounds us.
As ‘magic stars’ mark this path the Band of Holy Joy send us skywards,
While crossing streams, rivers, oceans to get to the place the heart quakes.

And so ends Side One in this bright return to the album. As CIRCUS FOLK
Join us, at the start of Side Two we are set for ‘the slapstick turd’ and
‘sense of the absurd’  to define us, as we regale in love’s laughter

Made by untamed hearts once they’ve met. The music is strident.
It moves. It is carnival and soul-chorus, as well as the perfect companion
For the pity and pith in Brown’s words. Which one hears once more

In CITY PEOPLE which has a touch of Bowie’s Heroes. The pulse
And the purpose of an anthem for all fills the air. As lovers cojoin
And the chance to connect calms the tempest of loneliness, vision

And the desire to kiss, carve and care. One can hear everything
In the purity BOHJ has perfected. Within Inga Tillere’s art and images
And across all their music, as both beauty and ugliness stir

The soul-soup we sup to see both sides of existence,
From the appropriation of ‘shimmering style’ to the pissing
Ón every shred of meaning you ever had,’ man’s myth blurs.

And woman’s too, as well as transgender, for this sauce is resourceful;
A Warlock’s brew to be sure, powering all and disarming fools
In an instant as we ‘revert to our cynical sport’ played on pitches

Erected behind every door.  AN INSTAGRAM MOON is sax spun
And then chiming Lotus Eaters style language. Brown philoso-spies
On an age which rather see a picture of the moon than it’s surface,

Or who see themselves as the planets around which orbits form.
It is song as sage, seeking an age which discovers instead of
Disclosing the shallowness after substance which the rest of us

Duly mourn. THE CURVE OF THE BAY is bright stars, synthed
From the edge of the water; a snapshot of transcendence which lifts
The eye, ear and heart. While THE FULL BLOOM OF ROSES extends

Its near whistling synth line into warnings that if we are not
Careful the meaning we share will be lost. In which love is the flame,
Firing from earth, felt in flowers and where dreams drawn

In notebooks become both design and desire for the demands
Of love and truth’s cost. BABYLON FAREWELL sounds so sweet
But here is Brown’s blackest lyric. As he ‘leaves this bad city

And moves back to Hell.’ Sick of fairytales for the so called sacred days
We’re all sharing, this song ends the album with two of the Band
Of Holy Joy’s greatest strengths, the sheer mastery of the magic

Within music masking and the song spells of its singer
Whose powerful words grant thought length. For here is anger
And loss, rancour and rhyme, freedom, fire. The mistakes we make

Send us higher, away from the earth into dream. Which is where
Beauty begins. Only a band this holy can help us, for as we transpire
Truth transports, love is scheme. This albums slips through your soul

And gifts it new colour. If that’s a mistake, then embrace it.
We should stumble on still. Mistakes gleam.

Louder Than War – Best Albums of 2023 So Far…

Band Of Holy Joy: Fated Beautiful Mistakes (Tiny Global)

Band of Holy Joy albums get increasingly difficult to write about because they are so out on their own that if you describe them in the florid, gushing torrents of verbiage they merit, then the uninitiated may be put off…I’m not going to break down and analyse and try to explain every song, because they are just so personal and odd at times that they are ‘open to interpretation’, yet at the same time, you can’t help feel they are about specific events in Johnys life and artistic and romantic adventures and endeavours. The album though is an ensemble piece: Mark Beazley’s bass, Andy Gallop’s drums, Pete Smith’s organ and Basia Bartz’s strings all play a vital part. James Stephen Finn proves himself to be one of the UK’s very best guitar-players…  Fated Beautiful Mistakes is an album that everyone should hear and hopefully take to their heart.  Songs that make you feel less alone. More optimistic and free to grasp hope and love where and when you can, while you can.

MOJO MAGAZINE