Artist: Better Joy

Venue: The Joiners

Town: Southampton

Date: 5.4.25

Better Joy is the moniker for all things Bria Keely, for it is her band in essence, the songs are hers and ultimate direction is all hers. Though only in the “Biz” for a relatively short time Keely struck me immediately to have an understanding and confidence in her approach to music. Dare I say "The Brand" all fits together in the modern world of Music as it must to be successful. She also benefits immensely from a trustworthy close circle of band and management. Band members on this Tour are all experienced musicians and drive the music along superbly. Jamie on drums is a local from Southampton so received extra attention throughout the gig especially when mentioned by Keely, resulting in a  spontaneous football style chanting that put a large grin on his face.

 The Merch table proudly displays the New EP on coloured vinyl, they flew out along with T-Shirts at the end of the show. Heading Into The Blue has 6 tracks and 5 of those were played to the Sold Out audience. Keely was clearly relishing the response from the crowd with Tour Dates now selling out constantly as word spreads.

"There was

a bounce throughout

the show

as the songs

all work

relentlessly"

Situations kicked the night off with it's tale of "it's not you, it's me", a fair few of Better Joy's songs speak of personal love's won and lost. The sound throughout had mostly a tight eighty's influence with earworm chorus's and a strong pop sensibility. There was a bounce throughout the show as the songs all work relentlessly - and your foot taps to the beat.

Couldn't Run Forever begins with a Strokes "Light" riff and builds into another singalong chorus. Then Keeley treats us to a version of You Get What You Give originally by The New Radicals, a song that fits the Better Joy sound and style perfectly.

The crowd adored Carnival which involved some bending of knees at various parts in the song in a sort of crowd participation which I guess will grow as the song is played more and more. Waiting on Time is a fairly straight forward tune which again builds to the chorus and drew you in. We end on Dead Plants maybe the song of the night with it's Smashing Pumpkins bassline and hints of Garbage production.... the lights go into full on strobing perfectly raising the roof.

Better Joy take various genres and borrow ideas to construct the feel of a song, there is real talent to make them all extremely listenable and poptastic!

Review by Dan Reddick

Photos by Dan Reddick