Little Joy Little Joy
(Rough Trade)
Why should anyone care if The Strokes continue to lie dormant when we have a side project as enjoyable as Little Joy? Albert Hammond Jr. is has been off doing his own thing for a while, apparently Nikolai Fraiture has a new band and now one of the more hidden members of The Strokes, drummer Fabrizio Moretti, has Little Joy. Rodrigo Amarante of the Brazilian band Los Hermanos and singer/songwriter Binki Shapiro round out the band. Sounds like an ill-fated experiment? Turns out their debut is a delightful lightweight breeze, and a more appropriately self-descriptive name for this humble group could not have been selected.
Moretti may join the shortlist of drummers who actually have sustainable creative talent outside the limitations of percussion. No, he doesn’t sing, but he writes or co-writes most of the tracks here. He’s getting a lot of the spotlight, but this isn’t really Fab’s show. Shapiro splits the singing duties with Amarante, who even lends some vocals in his native tongue. For this, it truly feels like a group effort, especially with the assistance of Devendra Banhart (much of the material here is reminiscent of his more recent releases) and production by Noah Georgeson (another regular in the current freak folk scene.)
The album is coated in a warm glow, mostly acoustic with a few reverb-heavy guitars. The influences are vast. Songs on here range from AM pop to bossanova rhythms to whispery singer/songwriter exercises, all with a cultured, global feel. Brand New Start is an extremely hooky summer pop song that introduces sneaky, growing horn parts, but most of the album takes on a much more somber tone, like on Shapiro’s Feist-like sleeper, Unattainable. Her velvety murmur is also highlighted over the waltzy strum of Don’t Watch Me Dancing.
On No One’s Better Sake bright organs are employed for another exercise in pop while Keep Me in Mind stands out as the only time Moretti resembles his other band, making it the only track that seems a little out of place on this record. All of these songs bring a sense of nostalgia that only worsens my mid-January spring fever. This album should definitely be revisited come the summer.
Little Joy is the sort of band that probably won’t remain the focus of any of its members, seeing as they already have vested interests in other projects. Hopefully this will not be the case, but if it is then that’s okay too. Little Joy makes for a fine, self-contained little album.