Better Joy

The Old Blue Last

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Exploding into the audience to greet friends with exaggerated and gesticulating gestures Better Joy, Manchester’s Bria Keely, negotiates her way between instruments, cables and mic stands. Bria, overwhelmed by their joy of being in London, tells the audience so. Tonight, there would a fine line between pandering and a banal performance. Better Joy’s headline gig at the Old Blue Last teetered on the edge of both. The buzz around her has been building thanks to a glowing debut EP (Heading Into Blue), comparisons to The Cure and The Smiths, and co-signs from BBC Radio 6 . So, when she took the stage at one of Shoreditch’s most beloved (former) sweatboxes, the expectation was for something quietly transcendent. What we got was...well, just quiet.

Keely opened with ‘Waiting On Time’, and for a brief moment, it seemed like we were in for something. The guitars chimed, the band found a groove, and her vocals were as breathy and animated as they are on record. But then things started to blur, and not in the dreamy, shoegaze-y way she might’ve hoped for, but more like our eyes before bedtime. Songs melted into one another with little contrast, like a Spotify playlist that forgot to shuffle.

There’s something to be said for restraint in performance; intimacy, nuance, etc., but there’s also a reason why even Phoebe Bridgers occasionally smashes a guitar. Keely remained composed to the point of being nearly invisible. A few murmured “Thank you”s here and there, but little to break up the mood-board of mid-tempo melancholy. The set lacked spark, urgency, or anything that might be mistaken for joy.

To be fair, the band sounded tight. The arrangements were well rehearsed and had potential. You can see the architecture of something taking shape underneath the potato sack facade of a performance. Great songwriting doesn’t always equal a great show, especially when the performance feels like it’s happening behind a velvet rope of middle-aged men without their children present. There were moments, like ‘Couldn’t Run Forever’, where her voice cracked with genuine feeling, but they were fleeting. By the end of the set, the audience had started checking their phones with the kind of glazed reverence usually reserved for midweek tube rides.

Keely clearly has the tools: a distinctive vocal tone, a knack for melancholic melody, and a sound that fits neatly into the indie-pop revival of the moment. But live, she’s still learning how to wield them. If Better Joy wants to make the leap from playlist darling to fully formed performer, she’ll need to bring a bit more chaos, or at least caffeine, to the stage.

Desire

XOYO

Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

It’s a school night, across from a school, at XOYO where we’ve just passed by a two-metre vertical neon banner subtly flashing, ‘SEX’ blindingly at us. We continue on descending into a lair filled to the brim with latex and vinyl clad disco vampires, peppered with a dash of Pierrot make-up to boot. Enough about the French though, because as we all know, Italians Do It Better. A third of their way through their two-month European stint, Megan ‘Desire’ Louise is out pumping their upcoming third full-length studio release, Games People Play, which drops on Valentine’s Day.

The last time we caught Desire, at the Roundhouse in 2019, they were supporting/heralding the death of The Chromatics.  Megz had been on our (and everyone else’s) radar when ‘Spell Bound’, also on tonight’s setlist, blew up the spot after being featured alongside label mates Chromatic’s ‘Tick of the Clock’ on 2009’s Drive soundtrack. Rocketing out onto the stage with a plastic Martini glass in tow, it was a mostly forgettable performance. That was then though, this is now.

Desire evolves beyond an image defined by plastic party receptacles, and now favours pouring out instead. On tap, you ask? A shaken, but not stirred, sci-fi, lo-fi, anime infused synth-tonic, semiotic backdrop, with a twist. The crowd drank it down and came back for seconds. It was impossible to know where to look at any given time. An immersive live action Escher of visual delights lay before us. The absolutely overwhelming spectacle of screens, props, sound, wardrobe, or lack thereof, and lights, had one struggling to maintain focus at any singular point for too long for fear of being mesmerized like a deer in the headlights or the low-key shame for some of walking into an adult themed bookstore.

Gone are the days of ‘fake it till ya make it’ bravado because when Megan cabarets on to the stage, plastic Martini glasses give way to a red vinyl trenchcoat and cut-throat choker. In tow, and on keys, looking as signaturely sharp as ever is Johnny ‘Alice Cooper’ Jewel in a technotronic studded leather jacket, alongside Louise Eva sporting a pair of smoke dark leaks, equally as flammable. Leading into the set, things heat up quickly with tracks like ‘Bang Bang’ and ‘Human Nature’. Megan lures the audience deeper down a taunting rabbit hole, peeling off layers till she’s left in a vinyl corset contraption (barely there) held up by sheer will alone. Covering New Order’s ‘Bizzare Love Triangle’, with lyrics splashing on the screen behind her, she encourages us to sing along with her karaoke style which, of course, we all do with little encouragement needed. A silent contract between audience and entertainer is broken halfway through when Megan looks down and notices she’s busted out, “You’ve gotta tell me when the titties bust out!”, she teases coquettishly to a jaw-dropped audience. Her crowd work is hypnotic and her choreography well-rehearsed. She roves the stage tossing roses, dipping and kicking in stiletto thigh highs flirting with the audience and relentlessly accosting her bandmates who can’t get enough of it.

Johnny Jewel’s a dark spectacle on the stage, he manages to coax Megan back onto the stage, “Playing with my heart? Finish what you start”, where we’re treated to a Twin Peaks backdrop, a shout-out to Charlotte from FedEx who got the albums over ASAP from customs and a new cut, ‘Drama Queen’; “On the road? Torture mode”. Megan, now covered in an elegant sheen of beaded sweat, doesn’t stop there, she keeps the night alive; inviting all who’ve attended to an afterparty at The Standard where she DJs alongside Johnny dropping deep cuts from across the Italians Do It Better back catalogue til 2am. Every sense was accosted throughout the night, and we left overwhelmed, and slightly inebriated, after multiple rounds of vodka shots with the Divine crew. These slickly packaged, talented lot are making their way across the continent if you’ve got a strong Desire to be entertained, get on out there and get freaky you bunch of lovely disco vampires.

 TTSSFU

The Moth Club

 Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

It was the night of The Great Escape (Festival’s First 50) but over at Musos’, we were planning to break in. After an exchange of tenuous communiques between promo and label teams, it was still quite uncertain if we’d find our way into the gig; you never wanna be without a chair when the music stops. As we queued up, we noticed The Moth was absolutely heaving and quite a few humanoids were still sluggishly shuffling forward like a dessert into an already bursting gut. By this point, many had adopted a rather cavalier attitude when announcing they were on the list. Most, if not all, were turned away which did not bode well for yours truly. When it was finally our turn, announcing ourselves before the gatekeeper as NAME REDACTED, predictably our fate followed the trend; ‘not on the list’. As a last-ditch effort, and ashamedly in the meekest of voices, we uttered, ‘try under Captain Stavros?’ Still not on the list, but this moniker caught the attention of one statuesque blonde parked a few feet away, en route to snagging a margarita pizza across the street. ‘He’s with us’. Enter one Xenia ‘The G’ Owens of Partisan Records, formally of Brace Yourself Press and friend of the blog. Her supernatural hearing, and timing, whilst interjecting herself into a supremely chaotic situation, is the stuff of legends That Totally Saved Shit From Undoing. After a few pleasantries (mainly groveling), we negotiated our way cautiously through a packed house to the front of the stage to behold Manchester’s proud daughter and sons, TTSSFU.

The set opens up with ‘Strange and Careless’, a possible euphemism to describe the spectacle before us and their performance largely as a whole. Not a criticism, friends. It takes a lot to blend into the Moth’s crinkled tinsel strewn backdrop with giant sparkle encrusted lettering, but Tasmin’s heart-shaped candy apple red sparkling guitar does a fantastic job of doing so. The trio of energetic bandmates, plucking bass strings, hammering percussion and squelching high frets, with Murphy shoving his guitar into the amp conjuring ghoulish feedback, is juxtapositioned with languid strumming and warm vocals that seem to shrug off the surrounding distractions with a natural nonchalance. This really stuck with us throughout the gig.

Arguably, Britain’s music scene is one of the most saturated in the world with pure untapped talent, and one of the hardest to break into. To wiggle your way up, even if extremely talented, is no small feat. Getting representation and signed to a label (the likes of which PJ Harvey, Idles and Cigarettes After Sex grace) makes it almost forgivable if the band in question might have a slightly inflated ego after traversing this musical gauntlet. One normally has to wade through performances patiently as an insufferable cavalcade of speeches and antics clomp by, all just so you can hear your favourite tracks performed live. Not so with TTSSFU, they used their newfound platform to embrace and infect the audience with an unfiltered, ego-deficient performance. And perform they did, in weird and wonderful ways. Fuzzy, wobbly sounds in drop-D tuning and static fuzz remind us of cassettes recorded over far too many times with the same flair of watching Johnny Cash’s psychobilly Cadillac roll on by. With endearing and peculiar charm, Tasmin makes known, “this next one’s a classic” as they ease into ‘California’, released a few years back as a single.

‘I Hope You Die’ is the penultimate track, of an entertaining set, largely made up of yelling non-lexicals. Before us unfolds a confusing scene, a mystic conjunction of precariously placed drinks laying spilt over electrical components that stubbornly refuse to quit. This, coupled with what we thought was a stadium crowd sampled and laid over the track instead turns out to be an un-hinged audience losing their collective shit over this song that resonates with them so profoundly. The set rounds off with ‘Remember’, where Tasmin thoughtfully introduces Paddy Murphy (lead guitar), Matt Deakin (percussion) and Reuban Haycocks (Bass), each of whom shone in their own merit. The track, and set, both culminate in Tasmin asking the audience to, “Look after your friends”, before launching herself into the audience shrieking at the top of her lungs. An infamous ending to be sure. TTSSFU is finishing up touring with English Teacher and coming back strong in 2025 with a host of new music and tour dates. You might, at this juncture, be asking yourself, what’s the draw? I guess it is an intrinsic dichotomy boiled into a band of wild wallflowers meet subtle exhibitionism. Tasmin and company tick a lot like a Swiss watch but more diabolical, if you know what we mean.

 Curses

 @ The Lexington

 Words & Pics by Captain Stavros

Curses are a funny thing, aren’t they? Sometimes they take the form of a bicycle with a dodgy back wheel. This unholy mode of transportation, or vile demon spawn in this case, having already broken two spokes on two separate occasions in a week, nearly claiming your life at a busy intersection, thirsts for blood. Which then relentlessly continues to demand, and get, a bloodied sacrifice to return to a somewhat functional mechanical asshole once more, type of curse. Or perhaps, and probably a tad more relevant to our review in this case, a curse can take the form of a string of empty venues whilst on tour. Not only that, but having to deal with a sparse audience being unruly, talkative and restless throughout a performance which is plagued by equipment failure and mild-to-medium electric shocks when your lips get too close to the microphone. Fortunately dear and valued readers, only one of these would be the case, and it wouldn’t be the latter. Enter, Curses.

Luca Venezia, born in the states but currently residing in Germany, by night known as Curses, thrives in the choppy and uncertain waters of a demanding international touring schedule; “I love the mystery of walking into a club and not knowing how the night will go.” Well, if one had to hazard a guess using support acts Corpus Milner and Nuovo Testamento as a metaphoric barometric gauge, it would’ve read smooth sailing all the way. At once, the set kicked off and we were all struck by the deep growling bass reverberating from the electro chop block propped on stage; all corporeal beings in its path were felled. Well-balanced accoustics enveloped the audience in a thick fog that’d put pea soup to shame. Curses, clad in psychobilly attire poured himself into the mic, while the music boxed our ears with a cutting brutality, in contrast with his vocal finesse that literally made the hair on his arms stand at attention. The same could be said for that of the hair on the back of our necks.

It is so satisfying trying to process, in hindsight, the atmospheric melodies of a dark-romantic, cinematic new wave set juxtapositioned against a DIY knotted nest of vipers in the form of aux cables, and strung instruments arranged around a chop-block-tableau centre stage. Luca, now part of the Italians Do It Better Family (no strangers to gooey eyed delights in the form of uber slick visual and audio) is out promoting Another Heaven, which was released last month. Curses, who also DJs and has been in-and-out of bands since his teens, has amassed a rich tapestry of influences and aliases in equal measures, but has quite literally found his voice when he dropped label expectations, embraced and learned from his many failures, and started making music for himself. This rich history entwined within his music and identity really helped build a relationship of trust between who we saw on stage and the audience below, tossing single roses into the crowd probably helped a little too.

‘Elegant Death’, with its throbbing and rolling bass really showcased not only Luca’s vocal range, but nodded to former label mates Chromatics. It was our set favourite, his compositional prowess really shone through. With the horizon in sight, Curses calls out to their manager, “What’s our call time tomorrow morning? I wanna know how hard I can go tonight.” “6am” was shot back but that didn’t take the wind out of his sails. Far from it, as he dove into the latter part of the set with equal measures of zeal, seemingly powered by an otherworldly source; flair. There is no doubt in our mind that the celebrations did indeed carry on into the small hours of the night. Sure, they would be met with regrets of biblical proportions, but we had none after a satisfying set. Catching up with the in-house sound tech at the end of the night they could not, nor could we, fathom how such talent is seemingly flying under the radar. I guess if you know you know, and now you know too.