Almost exactly a decade ago, I reviewed a tremendous band playing live in a basement in Dalston, east London; a venue so off-piste that condensation ran down the exposed light fittings. The band were called Joanna Gruesome – the name a snarky pun on that of the US baroque pop singer Joanna Newsom. Even then, its members had history, having come out of various teenage DIY outfits in Wales; in 2014 they won the Welsh Music prize for their debut, Weird Sister.
Joanna Gruesome’s twin frontpeople, Lan McArdle (they/them) and Owen Williams (he/him), shared vocals; they sang deliciously, apart and together, in keeping with late 80s indie pop stylings – early My Bloody Valentine was just one touchpoint. But their guitars meant serious business, transcending the studied amateurism of the punk underground for arty heft. Their melodies served up lashings of pop nous. McArdle eventually left; the band slowly fizzled out.
Fast-forward 10 years and the various members of Joanna Gruesome have reconfigured themselves, alongside others, into several new outfits, including Ex-Vöid and the Tubs, now mostly housed under one sprawling collective: the London-based Gob Nation. The on/off but enduring musical partnership of McArdle and Williams has only become more storied and fleshed out.
The pair have not one but two offerings out this year – Ex-Vöid’s second album, In Love Again, is the first out of the traps. Here, McArdle is foregrounded. On the forthcoming Cotton Crown by the Tubs (due in March), it’s Williams’s show, with McArdle on backing vocals. Both records are terrific, with plenty to set them apart – not least the backstory that frames the Tubs’ second effort.
In Love Again, meanwhile, was born out of the principals’ two recent breakups and occupies itself with “all that pain, all those feelings”, as they put it on Down the Drain. They’re holding torches, counting the cost; enduring situationships. All of indie rock seems to be contained within these 10 tracks – from the 80s to the present day, grungy and sweet, as if Johnny Marr were playing guitar in Sugar – alchemised into buzzy, saturated, melodic gold. It’s a love letter to Ex-Vöid’s many influences, but unquestionably their own update. Joanna Gruesome’s spiky defiance has been refined into something more nuanced – not least via the addition of lush, folk-rock lilts to McArdle and Williams’s duo vocals that now hint at Richard and Linda Thompson as well as any number of other classic, mixed-gender vocal pairings.
No one is running shy of being a guitar hero any more, either. Album opener Swansea opens with an air-punching guitar solo, which Williams freely admits was cribbed from the style of Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis. July starts like other bands’ songs end: with a euphoric flourish.
And although indebted to indie, Ex-Vöid’s default jangle is anything but weedy. On Nightmare, an easy-going, country-tinged tune, counter-melodies and crunch abound as McArdle and Williams paint a picture of a love interest who is hard to deal with. (“You are a nightmare,” the pair croon exhaustedly.) It often seems as if there are half a dozen guitars playing, they are so gloriously loud in the mix.
But range is evident too. The mostly acoustic Outline closes the album with pensive grace and pristine country-folk harmonies before finishing on a noisy squall. Lonely Girls is a cover of a Lucinda Williams track, a song Ex-Vöid collected after touring with indie-star-in-waiting Waxahatchee, a Lucinda superfan. Naturally, the track is barely recognisable, with higher bpms, drummer George Rothman emphasising the on-beat, and some unexpectedly elegant guitar work.
On their own work, the two lyricists cringe at, mourn and reassess relationships. Swansea, a short story in song form, queries someone’s unwanted attention. “You are finally back in Swansea,” McArdle and Williams sigh, with one voice. They raise a collective eyebrow at delusional declarations of love. A killer key change pivots the narrative. “But we both know that if you loved me, you’d still be back in England,” they sing, “on your own.” It’s not the only key change to make you actively sit up and clutch your heart: there are too many here to count.
The title track swings regularly between wounded plaintiveness and coruscating guitar anthemics. “Baby, he might come back again,” McArdle and Williams muse, as guitar pedals are kicked and released. “Over and over, baby it will never end,” they aver together, less as reassurance about falling in and out of love than as a fatalistic realisation. For Ex-Vöid, there is no getting off the queasy heartbreak merry-go-round.
