Artist: Band of Holy Joy
Title: Manic, Magic, Majestic
Format: LP
Label: Rough Trade
Catalogue Number: RTD102
Year of Release: 1989
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Tracklisting:
A1 Route To Love (3:02)
A2 Baubles, Bangles, Emotional Tangles (3:17)
A3 Nightjars (2:50)
A4 Tactless (4:15)
A5 You've Grown So Old In My Dreams (2:38)
A6 Killy Car Thieves (2:43)
B1 Bride (3:11)
B2 Manic, Magic, Magestic (3:38)
B3 What The Moon Saw (2:48)
B4 You're Not Singing Anymore (4:13)
B5 Blessed Boy (3:42)
I may have been a little hasty with my judgement of the single Tactless, as the Band of Holy Joy style holds up quite well over the course of an entire album. It still isn't great, don't get me wrong, it's just that there's a coherence to an album full that you don't get with a single.
I think the problem with all bands of this type is their essentially niche appeal. Their market is pretty much confined to people who like violins and accordions on their rock music. People who like the Waterboys, Dexys, Levellers, and more recently, Gogol Bordello, will probably not be disappointed.
But I think, if you're going to give yourself a very small musical palette to play with, as this band have, then really you have only two options for a successful future:
1) Become good songwriters
2) Expand that musical palette
People who do 1) well can have long careers churning out much the same stuff, even when their songwriting prowess fails a bit, because we forgive them for writing those great songs earlier on. I'm not naming any names here, you can probably think of a handful of bands like that yourself.
Bands that do 2) generally just add strings or a keyboard player, for fear of losing fans.
The braver people change suddenly (e.g. Radiohead) and lose fans, or they change from album to album (e.g. Bjork), because change is what they do.
Bands that do 1) then 2) tend to take over the world. But then no band so far has consistently done both [The Beatles, for example, deliberately ditched 2) with the Get Back project, and arguably nixed 1) by letting Ringo write a few tunes - and furthermore the current proliferation of music and bands (and access to them) means that nothing like Beatlemania can ever happen again {this is no bad thing}]. There's a bigger essay in this, and some obvious exceptions to the rules (like Travis, who have done neither, and are still, unaccountably, huge), but I think it works as a rule of thumb.
On this LP the Band of Holy Joy are bolstered by horns on a few tunes, which is mildly diverting, but the songwriting quality just isn't there.
Best songs:
Route to Love, for it's ska-ness
You're Not Singing Anymore, for the deft deployment of said horn section.
And extra points are docked for putting a bonus track on the CD version.
