TROUBLE IN MIND 7th March 2025
This is the second album from London-via-Wales members of Joanna Gruesome and Sniffany & the Nits and it is very welcome. We really liked the first set – an intense and brief set of sharp songs sung distinctively (link) – and this is an extension.
Cotton Crown, like the first, feels personal but a bit darker. There is jangle-pop, speed-punk and punchy pub rock but the big focus is THAT voice. Like everyone, I have to say it sounds like Richard Thomson and that’s a great thing, especially as the songwriting is totally dissimilar. Owen Williams is in-your-face direct and darkly funny with his lyrics and continues to focus on humiliation and emotional pain, which contrast perfectly with the tight pop jangle of the music.
It’s full of jump-out, stick-with-you lyrics from the opener; “never met someone you hate like me” or ‘One More Day’; “you can give me one more day, you can love me one more day”. ‘Fair Enough’ is full of them; “I know I’ve been an arsehole baby” / “when it all just falls apart, you can blame it on my putrid heart”.
The closing song, ‘Strange’, like others, is a story of social awkwardness – an accounting of the clumsy, intrusive, well-meaning social interactions that took place following the suicide of his mother. As Williams says: “I’d tried a few times to write a song about it. The result had always seemed either mawkish, simplifying or like I was hawking my trauma. But then this one came out, and it felt right because it looked at something smaller: the weird, unsatisfying, strangely funny ways everyone, including myself, acted after the dust settled.”
A personal set of songs that touch on the universal and rip along on a tide of jangly tunes. Recommended.
Our review of ‘Dead Meat’