Love, death and music power Inverness band The Joshua Hotel's new single
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The Joshua Hotel has been strangely silent for a long while and Joshua Mackenzie, the man behind the name, is talking about why.
The lockdown side project that grew into the space Josh’s other band Lional left – when the line-up couldn’t get together during the pandemic – became a live band with Louis Slorach on guitar and Josh Gilbert on drums.
With some momentous gigs locally in 2022 – at Mad Hatters in Inverness and their Belladrum set last summer, they seemed unstoppable. They even managed to squeeze in a first gig at the Ironworks on one of the last nights before the venue closed.
And the good news is that they are back.
Released on Friday, July 21, new “psychedelic pop” single Don’t You Remember is a wistful reflection on past times with its own earworm of a whistled refrain.
There is also a set at Belladrum to look out for the following week.
But first Josh is talking about the health scare that rocked his life off its axis for a while and left him thinking about life, death, music – “an existential crisis”.
He laughs at the grandiose word. But it sounds about right.
With a congenital heart condition, Josh has always had regular check-ups, but in 2022 he became aware things were not right.
“I started to get palpitations – fibrillations as they call it. As soon as it started happening, it suddenly thrust all these things in my face and obviously the experience was quite traumatic.”
Being closely monitored, at one point Josh was contacted by doctors and told to get up to Raigmore immediately as it was thought he might need a pacemaker to be fitted.
After four hours in a bed there, a cardiologist came and told Josh he’d need to take some medication but wouldn’t need a pacemaker after all.
“He said ‘Other than that, go out and live your life!’.
“I was buzzing – I got in touch with the guys from Lional because we actually had a gig the next night and I’d messaged them to say ‘I’m going to have to pull out of the gig because I’m having a pacemaker fitted’. And then four hours later I got back saying ‘Never mind, I’ll be at the rehearsal this evening!’.
“I marched out of the hospital and walked all the way home, I was on cloud nine! Then after a few days it all sank in and messed up my head quite a bit.
“The whole thing forced me to confront – it sounds dramatic – my relationship with mortality! Just the fundamental aspect that life is more precious and realising it can change really quickly.”
The closing of the Ironworks at the start of the year followed one of its last special nights when local bands and artists played – the return of Shutter, Iain McLaughlin & The Outsiders, Rory Baldwin and The Joshua Hotel, debuting as a group.
"It was our first gig there, but also the last time we would ever play there as well. In a way on a personal level and overall. Louis had done DJ sets there before, having this alter ego,. He is basically an accomplished guitar whizz and DJ and multi-instrumentalist.
"One of his favourite bands is Shutter and he had done a remix of their album and the music they came out to was one of the tracks from their album and it was Louis’ remix."
For Josh, the venue had a significant role in his musical life.
"I was at the opening night of the Ironworks – I was 13 years old and me and my friend would go to any Shutter gig going. We really liked them.
"With The Joshua Hotel, it felt more like a culmination of everything I have experienced emotionally in my life and I was channelling that.
"Though it was very sad it was the last night of the Ironworks, it was nice to get that one last window of opportunity to stand on that stage and perform these songs that had come out of my life at that point. And going to the Ironworks and seeing Shutter and bands like that was a huge part of that.
"On a personal level for me, it was a full circle thing and that was probably the most fun I had had at a gig at the Ironworks.
"It felt good and sounded really good, because I have always struggled to get a good sound on that stage. And it was busy for a local gig, so there were enough bodies in the room to make it sound nice.".
A couple of sad moments have followed this year for The Joshua Hotel.
Since then, the cancellation of the Midnight Sun Weekender festival on Lewis which they were due to play has happened and the closure of the small record label Josh was on. But if anything, these disappointments seem to have made music more important to him than ever.
Asking Josh why this song, why now, to release it as the chosen single, he said: "For a number of reasons – the amount of time that has passed, the last time I released a song was on the small record label and unfortunately that folded a month or so ago, so I am releasing this again by myself and putting it out there.
"It's almost as though I am building up again. The last single had a bit of energy about it and some good bits on the radio.
"But any momentum that could have been built on, that was kind of lost as things went into stagnation for a number of reasons.
"I don’t mind, it is a chance to draw a line under lots of things from last year and start again."
The song is irresistible in a Joshua Hotel set, a post-break up piece with a sense of longing for what's past, but also, maybe so over the lost love. And from the first line – 'I saw your ghost on my way back home but it was down an unfamiliar road', you are caught up in this story that could be a signature theme song for a movie or an inspiration for a novel. There's a sense of a new bruised wisdom in the lines 'It's OK to make mistakes, when you're golden, when you're young' from the persona singing, no doubt of the impact – 'When I lost you, I lost my mind too' and especially as – 'My heart is such a sentimental fool'. But there's anger in that heart too as the rejected lover complains to someone –"She said I’m a liar, well she’s a pretender!'.
And as you unpick the words of the story, there's the melody and the whistled refrain to join in with as you unick the story behind the words of the songs.
"There is definitely a theatrical quality to the sound overall,"Josh said. "With a bit of luck it might end up being an Ikea advert or Asda or something! These days I don’t think an artist can be snooty about that kind of thing.
"It seemed like quite a reflective song, it is looking back to another time in my life, perhaps.
"To me it has an element of escapism, this call to keep in touch with some of your interests and some of your values in life when you are young, that you have maybe lost sight of."
Josh revealed that Don't You Remember has come from that difficult time.
"I think the only thing I wanted to do for nine months is release a song. This song was written last summer when everything was happening in my life that led to the song. And as a writer and an artist even if you don’t have wild ambitions for a song you want to get it out there so you can mentally move on.
"I like to put them out in order of when they are written – as long as they are good enough – sometimes you think ‘Well that's not ..’.
"I have songs that I feel are more adventurous now, but I still respect the songs that came before – ‘You have got to have your time’."
For him, a sense of moving forward each time is important, like some of his biggest influences.
"David Bowie, Kate Bush, Bjork and Damon Albarn – not that my music sounds like their music – but their outlook and ethos is to push yourself and challenge the sound of what you are doing.
"So that is always my main driver, to always push mysel.f I’m sure people can listen and say 'It sounds like this this and that'.
"But for me, I haven’t tried that before, so it is trying new things."
He describes a scenario where it sounds as if some songs almost write themselves.
"The new single is a song that – like some do – just arrived.
“It is one of two or three songs that have come to me when I’m literally pulling into the road to my house, as if my subconscious knows I’m coming back home, so it gives me a song! That melody, the whistled part, was in my head straight away. I came in, plugged straight into my studio set-up. Then the lyrics came out naturally, I knew they were going to follow that melody. It was one of those songs that's as if it’s always been there in your mind and you just find it, basically.”
More music will follow – there is another single planned and a whole EP ready to go and the hope to possibly start recording at the end of the year for an album. First Belladrum and the band will be joined for a song by an exciting guest vocalist.
Last year's performance was a highlight, especially for The Joshua Hotel's debut at the festival.
"All being well, I think the performance this time will be a few strides above that one because we had just played our third gig last year.
"I think we were performing the songs well enough, but I don’t think we were relaxed enough to feel the songs and just go with the performance.
"I think this year you are going to see a more refined and relaxed Joshua Hotel performance from everyone."
And when not playing, Josh will be trying to catch some of the acts on his 'to see' list – The Dazed Digital Age, Shutter, Iain McLaughlin and The Outsiders and The Zutons, plus returning to playing drums with Maran & The Wildcats.
Josh says: “There have been times in my life when I have assessed the likelihood of becoming a successful artist and I’ve thought ‘Maybe I should just try something else’ when thinking about it in the conventional metric. But then a few days later something happens in my life and I just sit down and write a song about it! And I think ‘So, I have no choice!’."
It's a case of keeping the faith?
"It can be. But with everything that happened last year with my whole existential crisis or whatever, it killed off a huge part of my ego.
"Obviously I still want to be successful, but it killed off part of me that needed it for validation.
"I have become a lot more just – content? I really have much more of an outlook – ‘It will happen if it happens, but if it doesn’t, I will still make music anyway’."
Or possibly as the new single puts it – 'Don't you remember? Love is forever'.
Single Don't You Remember is out on Friday, July 21. Pre-save the new single here: Next set: The Joshua Hotel play the Belladrum Festival’s Seedlings, at 7.30pm on Friday, July 27.
