Californian one man band project Joy Must Remain already started in 2005 during the good old days of MySpace, but it took some time before the troubled debut album was released in 2010, and struggled to have a regular flow with just a bunch of EP’s since 2016. After his come-back last August with the brilliant A-side single “Division”, here is what should be its B-side.
The urgent and visceral “A Mental Low” channels his clear 80’s dark post-punk influences in a cohesive blend that naturally manages to be fascinating and obscure, thrilling and unsettling, built on relentless synthetic beats, powerful pulsing bass and layers of reverbed guitar, but it’s his slightly raspy and romantic voice, that may be likened to the charismatic Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler one, and the emotions that oozes, to resonates with me deeply, in a relentless emotional strain of deep sadness and melancholy, blurring the lines between past and present in an compelling way.
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