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Sorry. Must have slipped a contradictory adverb there. Because, let's fact it, it must be
brilliant being a Stroke. Free time, money and the kind of sexual magnetism which doesn't
exist outside of internet spam? Yeah, that must be tough to deal with.
Yet, for whatever reason, they all feel it necessary to wile away the spare hours messing about
with side projects, rather than just waiting for Julian to pull his finger out. Nikolai Fraiture
has Nickle-Eye, Albert Hammond Jr has, err, himself, and Fabrizio Moretti has Little Joy... And
yes, fine, for completeness, Nick Valensi has Amanda de Cadenet. But that's not important right
now.
There's usually something a bit weird about the dynamic of these side projects. Something of a
goldmine for patrons of bi-polar conflict, as the less well known members pendulum between
feeling enormously grateful for this opportunity, and expressing bilious resentment that they
aren't offered the same levels of recognition/praise as the 'star'. A case of "I love you. You
fucking famous twat...".
Confusingly, there's none of that with Little Joy on stage. Everyone is having fun. It's all fun.
And relaxed. And nice. Christ, it's almost sickening how nice Fab, Rodrigo and Binky are on
stage. Moretti in particular would be the most unimaginably annoying gushing moron if he wasn't
so unbelievably sincere. You'd have thought that you'd just get bored about being told how much
he "loved us fucking guys", over and over again, yet somehow you don't.
It also helps that Little Joy are refreshingly sunny which, on a dingy shitbread of a January
evening in a Camden basement, is kind of great. A casual cover of Walkin' Back To Happiness is
just the right side of jaunty, causing some unexpectedly vociferous pirouetting amongst the
crowd, while Don't Watch Me Dancing is transformed from the tragic Nico-esque recorded version to
something happier, yet still beautifully low-key. It's almost Los Campesinos!-like, if they had
recently spent some time in Rio, drinking Mai-Tais and beachcombing the Copacabana.
There's nothing revolutionary about Little Joy. Squint, stop concentrating, and a lot of the time
you could be watching a '60s beat-version of Fab's other band - "It's hard to explain from this
beanbag maaaaan" - but since when could that be described as a bad thing? Sometimes a little bit
of joy is a hell of a lot better than none.
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