That alternative, decadent Joyeria

Among the recent album releases worth mentioning – such as Arca’s glitch pop on “XXXXX”, the melodic rock of Lucia & The Best Boys’ “Picking Petals” and Shearwater’s art pop on “The New World”, there is one that’s unpronounceable and difficult to spell but very interesting: Four Tet’s latest album, and the return of the Strokes with “Reality Awaits”. By contrast, the experimental sound of Joyeria – an artist of Polish origin who grew up in Canada and is now based in London – has gone largely unnoticed. He jokes about it, saying that nowhere wants him, but in reality this background has allowed him to develop a sound made up of simple melodies, indie rock guitars, lo-fi production and unpredictable insights. His songs stem from lyrics that seek to capture a mood, carving it out with the sharp irony of a writer indebted to the Serbian-American poet Charles Simić.

On the fringes of the music industry

With an outsider’s attitude, Joyeria spent years playing in various bands. In 2021, he released a single on Speedy Wunderground, a South London label founded by producer Dan Carey, Alexis Smith and Pierre Hall, whose manifesto sets out some specific objectives: one-day, one-take recordings. “Here Comes Trouble” lasts six minutes and features at least three distinct atmospheres that twist and turn its flow. The following year saw the release of the EP “FIM”, six art-punk tracks poised between cynicism and introspection, and in 2025, “Graceful Degradation”. Here, the enigmatic singer-songwriter pushes the boundaries of experimentation, balancing it with incisive riffs and vocals. The title draws inspiration from David Courtenay Marr’s concept, according to which an efficient information-processing system should be able to react to minor errors without producing completely incorrect results. The human mind appears to possess this property, whilst most computers lack it.

Perhaps it is for this reason that ‘Decay Decay Decay’, Joyeria’s latest album, is only available on physical format at Rough Trade shops and on Bandcamp, including a limited-edition version that comes with a book of poetry. The cynicism and the sound remain the same, evident right from the album’s opening track, “Duller Grey”, a sad, bitter and twisted ballad. The lysergic waltz of “New Way” is repeatedly interrupted by post-punk outbursts, and these sounds continue into “The Donkey”. In the background lies the sarcasm with which they tackle adulthood and a society steeped in that Fisherian capitalist realism; in the foreground are the guitars of Pavement and the drive of The Fall. All this is condensed into tracks such as “Back in the U.K.K.K.”, ‘Winner’ or ‘Damn!’. Despite shifts in tempo and jagged interplay, Joyeria’s debut album flows effortlessly through its ten tracks, whether they’re hallucinatory nocturnes (‘Nothing’s Wrong’), Blur grappling with motorik (“Recent Discovery”) or noise abysses that swallow up carefree little tunes (“No”). We need unconventional artists – see Cindy Lee – in this age of algorithmic conformism. We should make more room for those who demonstrate that an alternative is viable. In this sense, Joyeria teaches us a valuable lesson.