Black feminist punk band Big Joanie have announced their upcoming second album Back Home, set for release November 4 on Daydream Library Series in the UK and Kill Rock Stars in the US.
The London-based trio have also released a new single in form of rock n roll ballad ‘In My Arms’, accompanied by a fantastic performance video celebrating queer love and friendship. Watch the heartwarming video below, as filmed in Southend and directed by Lydia Garrett for Girls In Films Productions. “At this point I was getting tired of living in London and dreaming about another life” says singer and guitarist Stephanie Phillips about writing ‘In My Arms’. “It’s about knowing you should go another way in life but you end up dreaming about the road you’ve already travelled down even though you know it won’t take you where you need to go.”
Recorded at Hermitage Works Studios in North London, Back Home was produced and mixed by Margo Broom (Goat Girl, Fat White Family) and features violin courtesy of Charlotte Valentine of the experimental art rock project No Home, who recently collaborated with the LA-based artist SASAMI. Back Home is a dramatic leap forward for the band; the band build on their tightly knit, lo-fi punk formula to bring forth a collage of blazing guitars, down tempo dance punk, and melancholic strings that evoke the full depth of the band’s expansive art punk vision.
The album title references a search for a place to call home, whether real or metaphysical. “We were really ruminating on the idea of a home and what it means,” explains Stephanie. “It’s about the different ideas of home, whether that’s here in the UK, back in Africa or the Caribbean, or a place that doesn’t really exist; it’s neither here nor there.”
The band worked with multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis to design the striking embroidered cover art, which is a depiction of Chardine’s nephew at the barbers. The artwork is a reference to the embroidered wall hangings popular in Caribbean homes post-Windrush that were a callback to the homes they left behind.
Back Home:
- Cactus Tree
- Taut
- Confident Man
- What Are You Waiting For
- In My Arms
- Your Words
- Count To 10
- Happier Still
- Insecure
- Today
- I Will
- In My Arms (Reprise)
- Sainted
