Better Joy At Dusk EP: Fragile, Furious, Fantastic
By Better Joy’s new EP At Dusk arrives as a natural continuation of their acclaimed debut Heading Into Blue, but this time the band peel back another layer of themselves. At Dusk finds them leaning into the quiet spaces — the moments where emotion lingers and words falter. It’s a collection that trades polish for poignancy, letting cracks of vulnerability shine through the band’s ever-evolving sound. The result is something more intimate, raw, and vocally devastating.
Produced by legendary studio hand Mike Hedges (The Cure, Manic Street Preachers) and mixed by Caeser Edmunds (Wet Leg) alongside Robbie Nelson (The Rolling Stones), At Dusk bears the fingerprints of alt-rock royalty.
The opening track, This Part of Town, unfolds over a steady drumbeat, its rhythm grounding the song’s hazy melancholy. Bria Keely’s vocals come in echo-drenched and deliberate, heavy with restraint — as if lost in thought somewhere between confession and collapse. Beautiful.
By contrast, Steamroller hits with a more visceral punch. The track cuts like a country heartbreak — all aching guitar twang and bruised honesty. Keely’s vocals slice through the instrumental wash, delivering raw, angry lyrics that make it one of the EP’s standout moments.
Plugged In, my favourite track on the EP, is personal, raw, and somehow encapsulates everything that makes At Dusk so wonderful. It drifts in on gentle guitar strums, slow and deliberate, each note reverberating with quiet tension, only to be broken open by Bria Keely’s haunting vocals. There’s a fragile intimacy here, a sense that the song is unfolding in real time, every lyric and melody weighted with vulnerability.
After Plugged In, I’m There hits with far more urgency, a full-throttle burst that has you shouting, jumping, and caught up in its lost-in-love howler. The guitars roar, the drums drive, and punchy vocals tear through with raw abandon, turning heartbreak into catharsis — messy, exhilarating, and impossible not to move to.
On Big Thief, “You Can’t Rule Me Anymore,” harmonies slice with cutting precision, Bria’s voice twisting and soaring like a roller coaster, the melody tumbling like the calm before a storm. It’s dark, melancholic, and strangely liberating all at once — a track that grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go..
The closing track, So Long, whispers its goodbye with delicate, airy vocals that usher in a tapping drumbeat, bouncing calm through the song like sunlight on water. There’s a bittersweet magic here — it feels like hope and what-could-have-been wrapped into one, utterly dreamy and quietly brilliant. It’s the kind of finale that lingers, leaving you suspended between nostalgia and possibility.
Verdict
Better Joy’s Dusk EP arrives like a whisper turned roar — intimate, ethereal, and impossible to ignore. It’s a small collection of songs that feels colossal in feeling, emotion, and rawness. Superb.
At Dusk’ Tracklist
This Part of Town
Steamroller
Plugged In
I’m There
Big Thief
So Long