Better Joy @ The Old Blue Last, London (Live Review) Featured
- Written by Captain Stavros
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.
