Start Listening To: Joyeria

Wry observations, sharp satire and self-aware songwriting from Speedy Wunderground’s most elusive outsider.

Joyeria is not an artist who makes things easy to pin down. Born in Poland, raised in Canada, and long based in London, he wears displacement almost like a badge, navigating questions of identity with a dry humour that spills into his music. His songs are equal parts philosophy and provocation, scribbled first as words on paper before being shaped into something raw, sardonic and strangely luminous. With a new EP on the horizon, we spoke to Joyeria about satire, sacred cows, mundanity, and why sometimes the most important thing a songwriter can do is laugh at themselves.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

I am Joy. I was born in Poland and grew up in Canada but have spent most of my life in London. I’d joke that nowhere wants me if I didn’t think there was so much truth to it. It’s weird to have spent most of your life somewhere but still have every single interaction lead with “so… where you from?”. I don’t know about the music I make. At least not in the greater context. I don’t concern myself with that, that seems like the job of a critic and I certainly would not like to take work away from the holy.

Your new single ‘I Don’t Know, Who Cares?’ is wonderfully self-aware. What was the first spark that set this song in motion?

All my songs start as the written word on a piece of paper. Trying to catch a state of being on the page is the spark. Having the awareness and tools to do it well is something else entirely. Sometimes it’s psychological awareness, sometimes delusion, often self hatred. 

There’s a sharp satirical edge to your lyrics. Have you always used humour to address heavier themes, or is that something you’ve grown into as an artist?

Charles Simic, a writer I adore, wrote in a short essay entitled Cut The Comedy when referencing Russel Edson and Kenneth Koch (another writer I consider a master) “Comedy says as much about the world as does tragedy…still, almost everybody prefers to be pitied than to be laughed at.” Can something funny be beautiful or if something is funny, does that mean it can’t be serious? These are of course just stamps of those who lack style (of thought). What is great and serious artistically is typically solemn and edifying. You don’t need to read too many pages of A short history of Decay (from E.M. Cioran’s post fascist era) to understand the dangers. “The devil pales beside those who own truth” and many artists love to indulge this compulsion to preach. I can’t imagine, like Simic, anything more horrible than a society where morbid self absorption goes unchecked. If the Greeks could make fun of the gods, I consider it a duty to make fun of myself and the small world I imagine I am in. Growing into the artistic humour is a strange way to phase it. I practice art… specifically in this question, my writing… I write everyday… not because what gets put on the page is good, it’s often not! However, when there is an itch I scratch and beneath the scratch there is a glimmer of light, my tools must be sharp enough to catch that light and put in on the page and shape it’s mood with sound. It’s more philosophy than art, at least in my head. 

You mentioned your distaste for the famous Hemingway ‘baby shoes’ poem, and even wrote your own beer-and-pretzel version. Do you often write with the intention of poking fun at literary or cultural sacred cows?

Make no mistake of my opinion, Hemingway was a great writer, but yes, I hate that poem. It’s a kind of gimmick. It manipulates the reader into a false sense of “oh yes, I get it” allowing the idiot to feel clever being handed a solution on a plate. It doesn’t do any of the work required of the writer. There is no genuine grief in that poem and for the many who have felt that very real emotion it’s a sham. For those who have not felt the crushing emotion of grief, it tries to get to an emotional response without the work / investment. If art has something to do with the compression of beauty and meaning, this poem falls victim to the pithiness it set out to achieve. I’m not attacking sacred cows or dead writers who can’t defend themself, but I am attacking mediocrity. It’s nice to know that even Hemingway had some stinkers in his notebook. Perhaps some editor is the one my hatred should be pointed at. 

How does the mundanity of everyday life feed into your creative process?

The creative process is really not much to do with mundanity. Life can be mundane, yes… but also, a lot of non-mundane things happen… often against the static background of repetition and routine, but that’s part of the deal. To imply it’s some sort of pre-packaged boredom isn’t correct. If this is the pool we are swimming in, then what I’m interested in is what complexities can be wrestled from the (sometimes banal) day to day. The seemingly simple yet endlessly complex and ineffable nature of existence. Mundanity perhaps defines the objective of paying radical attention to details which often turn out to be nothing at all. 

The Speedy Wunderground label has a strong identity and a history of working with distinctive voices. How has being part of that community influenced you?

There are wonderful people, many of whom I now call friends, that I have met through Speedy Wunderground. However, that’s where it ends. I have never been part of a scene or movement past my own nose. I’m a loner, an outsider, a solipsist. Any association outside of this is simply incorrect. 

What do you love right now?

Fugazi live recordings. The artwork of Gustav Klimt. Reading books. Chicken wings. Beer. Campari. Smoking cigarettes. Playing guitar and never using more than one pedal. Playing guitars with only one pickup. Playing guitars that are not from large manufacturers. Anchovies. 35mm photography and everything that comes with it. Promoters with imagination and vision. Small venues and their sound technicians! Independent and nondependant art communities. Ada and Madeleine. 

What do you hate right now?

‘Artists’ who spend more time with their stylist than a pen. The world's constant support of systems that further empower the obscenely wealthy at the cost of our development as thinkers and the earth’s environment. War. Nationalism of any kind. People who call music rental ‘streaming’ (It’s a stagnant pond but a bog is probably more fitting. Radio is true music streaming, one that I can, and do, swim in often!). Music agents. Political parties and politicians being held less accountable than every single other human. Flies. Any system where ‘those with most money win’… Which is every system. The blind confidence of youth. The blind confidence of age. Certainty of any kind … a destroyer of ideas. Buzzballz. Vaping. Podcasts. Stadium shows and everything they come with and stand for.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

Burnin’ by John Lee Hooker. I don’t actually remember how it came into my life… Probably my older brother who had excellent taste in music which I benefited from greatly. I always thought those old Mississippi blues players were the coolest mutherfuckers on the planet. Oh dear god, modern blues have been butchered and destroyed, but not John Lee. He was a deity. His approach to rhythm is very west in the head. Its funny. It’s dark. It’s got style. There are even modern day payoffs, musically speaking. Ask me this question again next week and you’ll likely get a different answer, but today, this is the answer and I stand by it. 

Looking ahead, with more music on the way this year, what do you hope people take away from this new chapter of Joyeria?

I am scared of this question. I don’t hope for anything. The new EP is called Graceful Degradation which is the ability of a computer, machine, electronic system or network to maintain limited functionality even when a large portion of it has been destroyed or rendered inoperative. I always make the simplest example of this being when an escalator breaks, it becomes stairs. I believe humans are in a constant state of graceful degradation attempting to prevent catastrophic failure. For those who happen upon this work, we might share a mutual sense of grace or sincerity.