First albums are free of any self-set standard of a previous. They’re free of any audience-splitting anxiety. So what artists do with their formal introduction becomes telling on release or in retrospect. On their debut album Join Hands, congratulations have decided to cram ideas, styles and sonics onto theirs like the Instagram-conscious pack their air luggage — maximising their allowance; bringing some things along they could’ve left behind. They’d tell you that’s the appeal. Maybe it is.
The Brighton quartet’s eclectic and erratic Join Hands comes off the back of two EPs and continuous touring around both the UK and Europe since the beginning. In September 2023 ahead of a gig in Valencia, they told Still Listening they would “dig in and get writing our album”. After that they created 40 demos, whittling down the best ideas and brewing them into alchemical concoctions of rock, disco, electronica and pop.
The band’s make-up of former metalhead (vocalist Leah Stanhope), funk-soul brother (guitarist Jamie Chellar), pop aesthete (drummer James Gillingham) and reclined Beach Boys fan (bassist Greg Burns) produces songs described by Stanhope like “a person with four ropes tied to them. Then we each take a rope and furiously try to pull it in our own direction”. One has to hope then that the tension doesn’t break the limbs off and leave a bloody, armless, legless torso on the ground so to speak.
Which it doesn’t, for the most part. These separate influences are recognisable and persuasive when you hear them. Percussive Prince guitar shimmies, a penchant for elevated vocal dramatics is deployed to beautiful rather than brutal effect and every track with drums runs on solid steel tracks of groove laid down by Gillingham which is the bedrock of the band’s sound. Though it’s easy to be lose sight of due to the electronic-led opener “Nevagonna” and “Johnny Hands” in the middle of the album — an ear-bleeder that sounds like a deep-fried ringtone — this album’s DNA is disco all the way through. Everything grooves from start to finish. Too many songs to list have a strong rhythmic feel even when it’s not played straight on the hi-hat.
When it’s lean and tight, it’s irresistible. “My Hair” builds on pinpoint playing from Gillingham with syncopated, swaggery punches of guitar and bass as Stanhope’s tight vocal glides over it all doling out the droll affirmative: “Like my hair to look this way / nothing wrong with my brain”. “City Boy”, which is dirtier, does something similar with brighter vibrance as the song jumps, switches and skips but the feel is constant. It’s this feel stewarded by Gillingham and Burns that allows them to go heavier, speed up tempos and helps the band push a maximalist attitude; convinced of having nothing to lose.
The only thing you could lose with Join Hands is a bit of patience. The band work to keep and mix in the ragged energy and edges bared on 2024’s Slap EP with a dance-floor sensibility. “This Life” builds a good momentum but takes a distorted up-tempo detour, swerving away from the groove the band was good with. The outro is a repeat of this but returns electrocuted with its hair on fire leaving you scratching your own head. Less a blend of two genres than a song with two bolted together. You can’t accuse them of being meagre; just that sometimes they do too much. “I Feel Severe” suffers from this — brash, loud and pounding with little of the dynamics the band show they’re adept at.
Showing a degree of self-awareness immediately after “I Feel Severe” is the elegant “Bubbles”, a lament laden with sampled Bollywood strings. Though in the middle it’s spliced with a funked-up groove where the strings were leading wonderful by themselves. Closer “Hollywood Swingers” is another meld where Stanhope pirouettes on a twirling beat surrounded by a cascade of distorted and twinkling guitar lines before the strange harmonies give way to an alienating submerged and thumping left-turn in the middle. Mercifully a reprieve of that beautiful chorus returns before it (deservedly this time) blows out again. These two tracks illustrate an undeniable ingenuity when you hear them, it also reveals an anxiety to often tie their great ideas with others that don’t mutually benefit them. For what ends is unclear.
The creative choices to splice, juxtapose and mess with the song structures that don’t work are conscious ones driven by the same tenacity that shapes the best songs of Join Hands, so the band is not misguided in trying them – overexcited would be more accurate. Marco Pierre White said of young chefs: “When they’re young, they tend to overwork it. They’re given all this information, all this knowledge, all this skill and they feel they have to use it.” This sums it up well. congratulations are a bright band; let’s hope they don’t prevent themselves from becoming a great one.
