(Photo by Autumn de Wilde.)
Three days ago, a Little Joy came upon the world. (And the Little Joy puns begin with a knockout.) On November 4th, Fabrizio Moretti, who's most famous for beating the drums for The Strokes and for bagging Drew Barrymore, released a new debut eponymous album for his newest project Little Joy. The band itself started as a venture between Moretti, a vocalist/guitarist named Rodrigo Amarante, and a multi-instrumentalist named Binki Shapiro who all simply recorded demo tracks with each other for fun. However, the more they enjoyed this creation of music, the sooner they decided to work together for a full record and hired producer Noah Georgeson to get everything tight and right.
With the vibe of this record being that it's spontaneous and very short -- running only at 31 minutes in length -- it's hard not to make a comparison to Moretti's more known work with The Strokes and their debut record, Is This It. And even tracks such as "Keep Me in Mind" and "Don't Watch Me Dancing" are extremely reminiscent of songs from Is This It. But thankfully, Moretti and his bandmates all bring something to the table that sort of mixes the good qualities of The Strokes and Amarante's work in a Brazilian indie rock quarter known as Los Hermanos. Little Joy has the quick pacing of a Strokes record thrown together with a more laid back approach. You can't help but feel peaceful and feel that life is such a simpler place as Amarante croons that "There ain't no lover like the one I've got/Ain't no lover like the one I've got/She and I have a brand new start/I gotta give all my love" as on "Brand New Start."
Arguably, "Brand New Start" is as sappy as any pap you would hear on the radio, but it works under the context of the do-it-yourself aesthetic of the band. Amarante might not mean anything about what he says, but he's having an utter blast with the song and he's not being overproduced or prodded into what most listeners would consider as "fun music." And the slight reggae influence mixed in with the smallest hint of garage rock and idealized lyrics is the perfect autumn music.
It helps that Little Joy's music succeeds in never overstaying its welcome. It is amazingly brief at 31 minutes, and seeing that Moretti's The Strokes had their last record (2006's First Impressions of Earth) go on for far too long at 52 minutes, this is a welcome amount of time for an album. And ultimately, a welcome time for an album that's surprisingly and wonderfully the best thing a Strokes member has put out in about five years.
Now let's see if Moretti's other band ever gets back together long enough to top it.
Currently, Little Joy's debut is streamable on their MySpace.
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