The Just Joans’ new single “The One I Loathe The Least” is taken from their forthcoming album The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans, due out on 10 January via Fika Recordings. “The One I Loathe The Least” (premiered over at God Is In The TV) is a song about friendship and finding someone who hates the same things that you do. A shared disinterest can be as powerful as a shared interest, and there is often something triumphant in these relationships when it feels as though it’s just you and them against the world.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of the Just Joans is a deeply personal collection of songs that hazily recall the past and contemplate the futility of the future. 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, Arion Xenos on keyboards and Jason Sweeney on drums.
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.”
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.
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