Artist: The Just Joans
Title: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of The Just Joans
Format: 12" album on black vinyl with lyrics insert | CD in digifile sleeve
Cat#: Fika077LP | Fika077CD
Release date: 10th January 2020
Bandcamp | Spotify
Acerbic yet winsome Scottish indiepoppers The Just Joans return with the dazzlingly maudlin The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans, a deeply personal collection of songs that hazily recall the past and contemplate the futility of the future.
A titular twist on the classic gothic horror novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by compatriot James Hogg, the new album is the follow-up to 2017’s You Might Be Smiling Now… and contains the kind of melodies and mockery that led Uncut to class the band as the point at which “Stephin Merritt lies down with The Vaselines.”
At the forefront remain the mischievous lyrics and heartfelt vocals of siblings David and Katie Pope, aided and abetted by Chris Elkin on lead guitar, Fraser Ford on bass guitar and Jason Sweeney on drums. Yet it is the recruitment of multi-instrumentalist Arion Xenos and guest appearance of Butcher Boy’s Alison Eales to arrange strings that have helped elevate the band’s music to new heights.
Their progression is most noticeable on lead single “Dear Diary, I Died Again today”, a painfully beautiful admission of everyday anxiety and “When Nietzsche Calls”, the triumphant cry of a spurned lover revelling in the misery of their ex to a backdrop of trumpets and violins. The juxtaposition of the fragility shown in these tracks with the menace of “Wee Guys (Bobby’s Got A Punctured Lung)” – an observation and understanding of the casual violence that once cast a shadow over the band’s hometown – highlights The Just Joans’ ability to seamlessly flip between sensitivity and danger, and sums up why Highway Queens described them as the “perfect Glasgow kiss.”
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans is a veritable smorgasbord of misery, longing and unrequited love; stories of small town resentments, half-forgotten school friends, failing relationships and awkward workplace conversations. As David explains: “It’s a collection torn from the pages of the diary I haven’t kept over the past 25 years. There are songs about places and people I vaguely remember, feelings I think that I once may have felt and the onset of middle-aged ennui.”
Despite entering new territory with the addition of brass and strings, they have nevertheless maintained the DIY ethos that made them darlings of the underground indie-pop scene, with each song on the album recorded and produced by the band in various gloomy bedrooms around Glasgow.
“Siblings David and Katie Pope have been cranking out charmingly shambolic, twee-leaning but feisty indiepop since the mid-’00s and their biting sense of humor (and thick Glaswegian accents) make for easy comparisons to The Vaselines.” Brooklyn Vegan
“there’s mischief in this miserablism” Mojo [4/5]
“the album fits into a Scottish indie tradition that goes back to BMX Bandits and The Vaselines. Like them, The Just Joans have mastered the art of writing sad songs that are funny and consoling rather than just plain depressing” Record Collector [3/5]
“enjoy the ear-pleasing rotation of boppy and bittersweet tunes” All Music [8/10]
“Another brilliant showcase for their idiosyncratic music and lyrics. Poets of the mundane, The Just Joans are in danger of becoming something of a British institution.” The Morning Star [4/5]
“this is the first best album of 2020” Narc [5/5]
“another wonderfully forlorn and cynical set of world-weary tales from sulky Glasgow siblings David and Katie Pope” Scottish Express [4/5]
“Memoirs is a charmingly introspective record; fun and thoughtful. The Just Joans are miserablist chroniclers, always looking about, wide-eyed, finding inspiration in the mundane, and delivering with a mischievous wink. They’re already something of a cult band, and this record further seals that status” Music OMH [4/5]
“this blend of the heartfelt and the comically morose sees The Just Joans indulge in a fine tradition of tuneful Scottish miserabilism that is distinctly our own, and might be doing it better than anyone else around at the minute” The Wee Review [4/5]
“The Private Memoirs and Confessions of The Just Joans, out this month, retains their love for the acidic indie-cabaret of the genre’s acknowledged master Stephin Merritt while presenting their strongest, most accomplished songs yet.” The National Scotland
“the wit and humour here is at the highest level of ironic commentary and makes this a lot of fun” Vanguard Online
“a sparklingly dark-humoured record of people, places and half-memories from songwriter David Pope” God Is In The TV
“For a band whose lifespan now stretches to four albums, it’s impressive that the cynicism, the bitterness and, most damning of all, the optimism of life as an outsider are still felt as strongly. It may say more about this writer’s age than the album, but there’s something reassuring about knowing you’re not the only one having a tough time and The Just Joans capture that feeling just so.” Get In Her Ears
“this latest album from the Joans is more sublime heartache with many twists of black humour” Is This Music
“a dizzyingly fun pop record about impossibly bleak truths” Balloon Machine
“The Just Joans delivering exactly the sort of thing that this slightly older type of indie-pop excels at, namely achieving a good balance between the onset cynicism that comes with age and the band’s own Scottish heritage, and the smatterings of humour and lightness to temper it and keep anything too bleak at bay” Soundboard
“The Just Joans are indeed writing big pop tunes here, despite the droll lyrics, and the sly heart-on-the-sleeve fake-outs going on in nearly every cut. For that reason, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of The Just Joans is highly recommended for fans of C86 stuff, to anyone who thought Jarvis Cocker or Stephin Merritt wrote great songs. You're likely to take these to heart in the same way” A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed
“sardonic, humorous, self-deprecating, bittersweet, and eminently clever” When You Motor Away
“Walking the line between poignant and sardonic, and with a dark humour that lifts them above most others, the songs are comparable to The Wedding Present, early Pulp, Ballboy, or The Delgados, but they sound like no-one else but The Just Joans, and to have such a strong identity is rare.” Scots Whay Hae
“the ramshackle of C86 and the slightest of jangly lo-fi and timid retro keys to sound like The Pastels lying down with The Vaselines” Jangle Pop Hub
“very much in the spirit of Philip Larkin, Mike Leigh, Alan Bennett, Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker if they had been born North of the border” It Starts With A Birthstone
“If The Beautiful South and Kirsty MacColl made a pact to form a band that fans of the Proclaimers might turn to on a dark and dismal night in December, they may well have created The Just Joans. Their perfectly constructed, quietly uncomplicated melodies probe the darker side of love, and like melodic Valium, rock you into a state of unruffled languor.” JoyZine