Band Of Holy Joy

Scorched Jerusalem

Available in shops now to purchase on vinyl and compact disc

Released January 17th 2025 through Tiny Global Productions

Band Of Holy Joy's newest album is somewhat divorced from the general romanticism of the last four albums. Tiny Global Productions is proud to be releasing what will be considered one of the crucial (if not outright caustic) albums of 2024.

Scorched Jerusalem confronts the historic-political issues of the last several years head-on and, if you haven't noticed, we're in a mess. The album's first side is beyond grim, mixing an almost Adrian Sherwood / Mark Stewart-style production to some of singer Johny Brown's starkest urgent lyrics in over forty years of recording. Although it feels as if the band has picked startling moments from the last decade-and-a-half or so (one song references Anders Behring Breivik's mass murder outside Oslo in 2011), there are moments - generally found on the second half - where the band's instinctive grace and beauty power past the pain and brutality - French Riots sounds joyous, Palace Commune scales the top tier of BOHJ's tower of majestic beauty, while When The Tulips Bloom The War Will End, with the sound of a Weimar-era waltz, as if to remind us of what lies behind us also lies ahead.

We can't overstate the importance and brilliance of this album, and especially its relevance to the utter crap the world's going through at the moment. Johny and the band offer no solutions beyond "simple faith in people" (in the closing track), and only a liar would have you believe there's much more to count on than that . . . if we've even got that.

We like to think we release a lot of great (if unheralded by the general public) records that mean something, at least to certain people. Scorched Jerusalem is a strange outlier in that it needs to be heard by more people than will likely hear it. It's rather late in their career for Band Of Holy Joy to have come up with something so utterly transformative as this album . . . but here we are.

Purchase from Bandcamp

Purchase from Amazon

Purchase from Rough Trade

Purchase from Sister Ray

Purchase from HMV

Purchase from Record Plant

Purchase from Norman Records

Purchase from Banquet Records

Purchase from Assai Records

Purchase from Juno

Purchase from Five Rise Records

Purchase from Resident Music

Purchase from Bengans

Purchase from Vinyl Destination

Purchase from Vinyl Pladen

Purchase from Reflex Record Shop

Purchase from HMV (Japan)

Purchase from Diverse Vinyl

Press

Louder Than War

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... Just mentioning Bowie in the same breath means people's expectations are high... David Bowie is still very dead – sings Johny on one song. City People resembles Heroes in its construction. Fated Beautiful Mistakes does have a blackstar feel about it – Without the finality I hope and pray. It does have more of an overall feeling of contentment though, but an undertow of melancholy... Johnys ‘unique’ distinctive vocal style is maybe what has stopped the Band of Holy Joy crossing the cult/mainstream divide. You could say, unkindly, that ‘He can't carry a tune in a bucket’ but he can hold our heart in his hands and inspire us to believe that there is hope and goodness and beauty in the world, if we only keep looking; in nature, art and the right people. He has soul and his voice is so loaded with it, it does ‘wobble’ a bit... New York Romantic has a chorus to die for ‘Everyone loves to love, Oh to always love and be loved’ and Terry Edwards excels himself on sax. The whole band gel beautifully backing up Johnys poetry – James Stephen Finn proves himself to be one of the UK's very best guitar-players in terms of providing beautiful, perfect accompaniment to the words and feel of the songs. Lyrical, passionate playing which reaches it's apex on Full Bloom of Roses... 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.
Ged Babey

Uncut Magazine

★★★★
Four decades on from their self-released debut cassette, Johny Brown's perpetually undervalued, proudly indie collective continue to chronicle troubled souls and kitchen sink drama. Always captivating, his distinctive vocals lurch from a distraught warble to a strangulated wail, "composed of many humours", as he sings on "New York Romantic", and "vulnerable to pernicious tumours". His band, meanwhile, welcome Terry Edwards, who blows up a storm on that same Sea Power-esque tune, while the incredulously starry-eyed "Our Flighty Season In The Dirty Sun" is full of cheerful shalalas and "City People" apes Bowie's "Heroes" on a shoestring budget.
Wyndham Wallace

Narc. Magazine

★★★★★
Why Johny Brown isn't lauded as one of England's greatest lyricists is an unfathomable mystery. The North Shields-raised polymath has fronted Band Of Holy Joy since the early 80's, but the group has has an astonishing run of form over the last seven years, with every release surpassing its predecessor. Fated Beautiful Mistakes continues this extraordinary upward trajectory. Brown's lyrics challenge and inspire the listener to be fully alive and conscious of the beauty and fragility of life, while never shying away from the gravity of the state of the world in these disorienting times. Musically, Band Of Holy Joy have reached a new peak, evoking Scott Walker, The Velvet Underground even Nelson Riddle-era Sinatra on this gorgeous, warm-hearted and passionate album.
Gus Ironside

Mojo Magazine

★★★★
Ever since Johny Brown set sail its third iteration in 2007, Band Of Holy Joy have refused to stay static, tackling modern ills without a thought for the past. Their latest lands somewhere between cinematic indie pop and thrusting deep soul on New York Romantic, with Our Flighty Season In The Dirty Sun adding a gospel twist to its big parcel of yearning. While fuller orchestrations (strings, saxes, flutes) recall their Rough Trade tenure in the early '90s, it's grounded by James Stephen Finn's tremolo guitars and Peter Smith's '60s organ, a tinge of Bowie's "Heroes" pulsing through City People's wassailing grandeur. Brown is at his most reflective, vulnerable, and tender here, his poetic befuddlements betraying a quest for spiritual elevation over abductive melodies.
Andy Cowan

Record Collector

★★★★
There's a growing consensus that, four decades in, Band Of Holy Joy are testifying better than ever. They've always been worthy, even valuable, but their recent run of albums, leading to this impassioned stormer, seems to fuse spirit and substance; it's poetry, but it's also magniloquent music. Johny Brown's lyrics address, obliquely or directly, our contemporary, morally threadbare world - what a great song title Instagram Moon is - but also shoot for timeless grandeur from well-read gutters as New York Romantic, A Citadel Of Crooked Soul and Babylon Farewell attest. His voice is a rich flavour, and some may need an occasional break from its in-your-face emoting, but the astute band can play baroque or bar-room, showbiz or smalltown. Sanctify this.
Chris Roberts

Vive Le Rock

★★★★
Band Of Holy Joy have enjoyed a consistent run of strong releases since 2016's Brutalism Beings At Home. This latest album solidifies on this recent creative flush, offering a shimmering flare of optimism for these conflicting times. Johny Brown's intimate vocal style conveys both societal awareness and a fundamental human warmth - precious commodities in this current climate. There's a sense of lush, romanticised idealism to this set, palpable from the opening bars of Lighthouse Keeper, through the dare-to-dream wistfulness of A Citadel Of Crooked Soul, to the magnificent Flighty Season In The Dirty Sun, while City People comes over like a misplaced cousin to Bowie's Heroes. It's tempting to read Fated Beautiful Mistakes as an artistic rejection of more pernicious realities; or perhaps even a signpost to better days?
Hugh Gulland

Biography

Then

Formed from the ashes of an unrecorded '77 punk band, Speed, Band Of Holy Joy's initial musical forays were largely in the domain of industrial bricolage and occasional bursts of madness.

By the time they began releasing records under their own name in the 1980s, the band's humanist tendencies came to the fore, with astounding portraits of people on the periphery, resulting in such classics as Rosemary Smith, Mad Dot and Don't Stick Knives In Babbies Heads.

The sharp sensibilities of founder and leader Johny Brown eventually led to a star-making deal with Rough Trade, a few near hits and career momentum shattered when the label collapsed mere days after what might have been the band's breakthrough album.

Now

Slowly, a new Band Of Holy Joy has blossomed. The band operates, well, differently. In some aspects, they're an art collective. Inspired by the possibilities which burst forth after punk, the band's expression takes many forms. Visual artist Inga Tillere plays a large role in shaping the band's aesthetic and live events, and in musical foil James Stephen Finn, Daryl Holley, Brenno Balbino and Peter Smith. Johny's poetic vision transcends expectations without resorting to desperate reaches into esoterica.

The Band Of Holy Joy model of today is a sleek beat outfit that owes as much to indie music in the proper sense of indie as it does to the Brechtian connotations of past Band Of Holy Joy incarnations. They have lineage but never dwell on it preferring to forge forward. They have a history too but never let it drag them back. For the past few years they have been quietly growing and gestating and now they have emerged fully reborn with renewed purpose of sound and vision.

PERSONNEL:
Johny Brown [vocals] | James Stephen Finn [guitar] | Peter Smith [organ & synthesizer] | Conor Fensom [bass] | Joseph Sergi [drums] | Inga Tillere [visuals]

Discography

Albums

2025. Scorched Jerusalem [vinyl/CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2023. Fated Beautiful Mistakes [vinyl/CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2021. Dreams Take Flight [vinyl/CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2019. Neon Primitives [vinyl/CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2017. Funambulist We Love You [vinyl/CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2016. Favourite Fairytales For Juvenile Delinquents [vinyl box compilation] released on Vinyl-on-demand.

2015. The Land Of Holy Joy [CD] released on Stereogram Recordings.

2014. Easy Listening [CD] released on Exotic Pylon.

2013. City Of Tales: Volume 1 & 2 [cassette] released on Exotic Pylon.

2012. The North Is Another Land [CD] released on Moloko Plus.

2011. How To Kill A Butterfly [CD] released on Exotic Pylon.

2010. Paramour [CD] released on Radio Joy.

2008. Punklore [CD]

2002. Love Never Fails [CD] released on Rough Trade.

1992. Tracksuit Vendetta [vinyl/CD] released on Ecuador.

1990. Positively Spooked [vinyl/CD/cassette] released on Rough Trade.

1989. Manic, Magic, Majestic [vinyl/CD/cassette] released on Rough Trade.

1988. The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea [cassette] released on Cause For Concern.

1987. More Tales From The City [vinyl/cassette] released on Flim Flam Productions.

1987. When Stars Come Out To Play [vinyl] released on ByeBye Baby.

1986. The Big Ship Sails [vinyl] released on Flim Flam Productions.

1984. More Favourite Fairytales [cassette] released on Pleasantly Surprised.

1983. Favourite Fairytales For Juvenile Delinquents [cassette]

Extended Plays

2017. Brutalism Begins At Homes [vinyl] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2012. Wyrd Beautiful Thyme [vinyl] released on Exotic Pylon. (purchase..)

2009. A Lucky Thief In A Careless World [CD] released on Radio Joy.

Compilations

2022. Everyone Is Searching For Beautiful Things [CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2017. The Clouds That Break The Sky [CD] released on Tiny Global Productions. (purchase..)

2007. Leaves That Fall In Spring... [CD] released on Cherry Red.