Joie De Vivre - The North End

Same band, same scenario. As happened with We're All Better Than This, I bought a Joie De Vivre album digitally and still ended up buying the vinyl. There's just something about this band. This one I got from Count Your Lucky Stars at the same time as I did Snowing, and it was ruddy cheap. Thanks again, CYLS.

A minor case of deja vu. Another Joie De Vivre album with not a lot going on, one dominant colour and a nice slight fuzz on the image. Not sure on the lettering style for the band name, but that white band at the bottom is delightful.

Double-sided insert, as before. While WABTT's art was all about ducks, this album is all about dogs. Possibly even just one dog, as they all look quite similar. The other side, as usual, is lyrics - but there's a twist here. The tracks aren't listen in album order, there doesn't seem to actually be any order to the tracks. Very strange.

Though it looks like it could be white here, this is definitely the "milky clear" it was described as in the CYLS store. I'd probably go with "translucent white", but it's lovely regardless. Nice paper aeroplane motif, too. For you numbers nerds, this is from the second pressing and is limited to 350.

This is Joie De Vivre's first full-length album, following on from the extended EP Summer Months (more on that soon), and I have to say it took a while for this to click with me. It's a little slower than WABTT and maybe a little sadder too. The first few times I listened to it, nothing really stuck. I thought it was okay but little more and really it was only how much I enjoyed WABTT that kept me coming back for more Joie De Vivre. All of a sudden, everything fell into place. It's impossible to pinpoint exactly what it was - perhaps the impressively sad trumpets that signal the start of Salt, the immediacy of the chorus to Upper Deck San Diego or the dripping sadness of the title track - but I went from apathy to adoration in the space of about a day. I now rank this right up there with WABTT in terms of my favourite emo albums, and tend to listen to the two consecutively when I can (which more often than not involves being sat in bed with a cup of tea). The digital version is super-cheap because CYLS like that kind of thing. I can't recommend it highly enough.