Joy of Nothing Review

The second solo outing from Foy Vance, his first on Glassnote, comes cool on the heels of his well-received 2006 debut, Hope. Not that the Bangor-born singer-songwriter has been idle. The intervening seven years have seen him collaborating with fellow Northerner David Holmes on the score of Oscar-winning short The Shore, not to mention touring extensively with the likes of Snow Patrol, Michael Kiwanuka, Marcus Foster, Bonnie Raitt and Ed Sheeran.
Somewhere along the way, his marriage broke up and, suffering a crisis of artistic confidence, he relocated to the Scottish highlands. Thus the delay. Recorded in Attica Audio in rural Donegal, and produced by Michael Keeney, Joy Of Nothing features a number of talented musicians (both Raitt and Sheeran guest on the album), but it’s Vance’s extraordinary, heartfelt vocals that are always centre-stage.
The pace may change (‘Janey’ sounds like an acoustic Smashing Pumpkins cover), but there’s a thread of heartbreak running through all of these songs. This is largely a deeply personal sounding album about breaking-up, going crazy and eventually healing and coming to terms with things. Not the most original subject matter, you might say, but then love and loss are enduring artistic themes. He has a literate turn of phrase, too. On the title-track, he sings, “Ulysses and eulogies/ Gainsborough, Gainsbourg, Socrates/ All mean no light, everything.”
He directly addresses his marriage break-up on the Steve Earle-ish ‘At Least My Heart Was Open’: “Well I tried to do what I felt was right/ And I know I fucked it up sometimes/ But at least my heart was open.” On ‘You And I’, a duet with Raitt, he claims he’s “trying to find my joie de vivre again.” By the Sheeran-aided closing track, ‘Guiding Light’, it sounds like he’s found it.
Featuring ten songs of love, loss, hurt, pain and forgiveness, Joy Of Nothing is a sorrowful, soulful and ultimately healing album. It probably won’t dent the charts, but it’ll mean a lot to those who discover it.

Key Track: 'At Least My Heart Was Open'