Album Review: Current Joys - 'East My Love'
Current Joy’s current album - as always, not so much joyful, but nonetheless good.
It feels safe for me to say that from track one of East My Love you might start to notice a strange feeling of some sort. What is it? A little… nostalgia? Deja vu? Perhaps it’s the vague sonic call-back to early Surf Curse, (even if it’s ten years later and the genres are a little different). And if Nick Rattigan’s new album sounds familiar in other ways, it has good cause to. At its best East My Love perfectly sums up the feeling of early evening and the mid-autumn cold rush. A bit fresh, a bit bitter-sweet. The kind of feelings most people experience at least once a year, when the seasons change from autumn to winter and loiter in-between. This is a level of emotional acuity rarely seen since Wasteland, Baby! (Hozier), and it’s pretty well executed as it goes.
If first song “Echoes of the Past” kicks off the theme and sets the tone, the rest of the album doesn’t disappoint. The instrumental third song, “Days of Heaven”, refreshes your brain enough from the jangly guitar so that you’re prepped and ready for the bittersweet follow-up, “Never Seen A Rose.” Each song adds a little more, building whilst still in keeping with the overall themes of the previous numbers - so that when Rattigan switches from 5th track “Lullaby to the Lost” into a… sad indie Bob Dylan cover, it doesn’t feel like a bumpy transition. This “O, Sister” callback fits so well with the childhood road-trip elements that run through the rest of this album that it almost feels like you’re in a car (Buick, maybe?) singing along to an old Dylan CD in the American Midwest. Soon to come are more references - for example, one of the already released singles takes its title from 20’s noir novella/60s movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They - designed to take the listener back to a previous time in space. This is a rerunning of the old and a sort of reimagining of what's now new.
In fact, one of my favouite songs from the whole album does exactly that - the final track, an unexpected Simon & Garfunkel cover, instantly reminded me of my early childhood. This album builds up in pace as it goes on, although without losing anything it had to begin with. By the time you get on to “Sister Christian” it’s built up enough to imagine yourself dancing to it, it’s hard and one of the more rockish songs EML has to offer. This means that by the time “Feelin Groovy” comes around, the sudden change to something more upbeat seems only a natural progression - and an interesting shift.
As an indie skeptic (if only partly because listened to so much of it at the age of eleven that I think I’d overdose on sound-waves if I tried again anytime soon), I did find myself enjoying this more than expected (although I’m not sure I’m a full on convert just yet.) In fact, I might even reluctantly describe it as “alright,” if pressed - high praise coming from somebody who feels uncomfortable listening to Beebadoobe on a good day. Perhaps it’s the way that, while listening, you feel yourself in such a specific, invisible place - you’re at times there in the California rain described, and at others almost nowhere at all.
Words by Eva Woolven
