Little Joy

Little Joy - Little Joy (***)
album review for the skinny

Surely nobody was thinking of That's The Story Of My Life and After Hours when The Strokes and The Velvet Underground were being routinely compared back at the turn of the century. That's pretty much what Strokes' drummer Fabrizio Moretti's new side-project Little Joy sounds like: cutely perky acoustic folk songs, with minimal arrangements and nursery school vocal melodies. Playing the Moe Tucker role here is Fab's current beau Binki Shapiro, and her two tracks on lead include the standout Don't Watch Me Dancing, which swells to a singalong climax with Fab and regular singer Rodrigo Amarante on backing. The vocal harmonies provide the best moments throughout - the chorus cooing over old school organ licks on No One's Better Sake, the Western bar-room la-la-las on the elegiac With Strangers - but while Little Joy's stories are more grown-up than I'm Sticking With You ever was, few are, in a manner of speaking, made out of glue.