The Joy Hotel

With Big Special

QMU, 5 December 2024

As we headed to the QMU to watch The Joy Hotel, we reminisced about the first time we saw Emme Woods at TRNSMT in 2018 playing on the smallest of stages on a hot summer’s day.

There was something that afternoon that set her apart from others on this fledgling stage of the festival and, for whatever reason, she had drifted out of our music consciousness until earlier this year when a series of social media posts highlighted the release of a new album and her being part of a band as opposed to the solo artist we had watched several years before.

The debt album itself, Ceremony, is a classy piece of work by the seven members who make up The Joy Hotel and they effortlessly transferred the studio production onto the stage at the QMU to the delight of everyone in front of them.

While Emme Woods continues to be a focal point for much of the show, with her raspy vocals not a million miles away from fellow Scottish vocalist of a bye gone era Maggie Bell, she shares the front of house duties with Luke Boyce throughout the show, a combination that highlights the broad church of genres that the band encompasses, part indie pop, part alt-country, part psychedelic rock.

The live setting also enables the other five members of the band to demonstrate their own abilities with Jaun Laforet on keyboards, vocals and guitar alongside Jenny Clifford on guitar and vocals adding a depth to the songs played. Behind a veil of lace curtain materials ‘hid’ Jack Boyce on drums Jack Borrill on base and Scott Flanagan on acoustic guitar duties, and again it’s the collective sound that highlighted how tight a unit they have forged themselves into.

While the songs from Ceremony dominated the setlist, there were hints of what was to come in 2025 with some new material that sounded every bit of good from what was released earlier this year.

Six years ago, Emme Woods was someone we had earmarked as someone to look out for in the coming years. A personal tip for the top that still stands, though in the context of being part of The Joy Hotel. The album, the gig, the overall sound, is something that should take them a long way in the years to come, though hopefully over a shorter timescale.

Support Act – Big Special

Social media can provide a warren of information, some fake, some true, some hyper, some informative. Like everything else, you can read into something that wasn’t how it was intended by the writer of the post.

There was little doubt though about the intent of the message by the couple of people who came to the gig in Glasgow having battled across the country on the M8, found difficulty in parking, probably got soaked on the way to the QMU, only to be met by two loud mouthed men on stage banging a drum and shouting out the ‘lyrics’ to what they contrived as a song.

Welcome to the world of Big Special. Definitely an acquired taste, but a taste I for one was quite happy to listen to. Joe Hicklin might not be a Nick Cave or Joe Talbot of the Idles but there is no doubting his commitment to his trade. Behind the shouty mouthy songs on the night though there is a vocalist who can put a tune together as heard on e.g. This Here Ain’t Water. And Callum Moloney likes nothing better than thrashing the drum kit in front of him and adding the occasion backing vocals.

The world would be a much poorer place if music only revolved around the styles and production of The Beatles or Pink Floyd, The Clash, Chic, Springsteen, Take That or Taylor Swift.

We need to hear and appreciate a wide variety of music to be able value what we actually like.