Go to enough gigs and you’ll notice that the artist will usually play a few songs – most often three – before greeting their audience. Getting the show under way establishes a rapport; it sets the feedback loop in motion. It settles the nerves.
Joy Crookes performs five whole songs before she smiles broadly and says hello – just under half of her lovely, amber-hued second album, Juniper, must flow under the bridge first. Released in September to critical acclaim, the record is named for the resilient variety of cypress that thrives in challenging conditions. On it, Crookes tackles familiar topics – love, of course – but also delves into more granular themes such as impossible western beauty standards (Carmen), generational trauma (Mother), Catholic guilt over same-sex relationships (Paris) and the importance of having an attack dog for a manager (I Know You’d Kill). All this verve, all this cultural side-eye, comes wrapped up in warm, retro soul-pop with the occasional foray into Caribbean cadences. A lot of Crookes’s songs feel wise beyond their years, like old standards. It is an approach that separates the 27-year-old’s work from the rest of the crowded solo female pack, where she might otherwise find herself lost between Raye’s jazzy dominance and the counter-cultural clout of Greentea Peng.
Quite a few of Crookes’s songs are about mustering courage: to speak, to act, to change. She opens with the twinkly, smoky Brave, its old-school comforts contrasting with her yearning for the nerve to evolve, and to commit to love. The song can also easily be heard in the context of Crookes’s struggle with anxiety attacks, which delayed her second album. Even the singer’s best-known tune – the ubiquitous Feet Don’t Fail Me Now from her debut album, 2021’s Skin – sets positive self-talk (“I got to stand my ground”) against the urge to curl up in the foetal position.
As the many fans who have taken it to heart know, Feet Don’t Fail Me Now has earned a cultural position that is strangely untethered from the charts, probably because it deftly filled an aching, Amy Winehouse-shaped gap in British pop, and also because we all need geeing up from time to time. But the track was written with a very specific aim in mind: to have the confidence to voice political opinions in an increasingly polarised world, and to not be a bystander.
All this verve comes wrapped up in warm, retro soul-pop with forays into Caribbean cadences
Crookes does not lack a backbone. She’s found the internal resources to leave an abusive relationship and write about it. She has been vocal in support of Palestine; her outfit on stage at Glastonbury in the summer consisted of the flag’s colours black, green and red (and hot pink), and also reflected her Bangladeshi heritage on her mother’s side.
Crookes’s father is Irish and she grew up in south London, frequently visiting both Dhaka and Dublin while marinating in London’s own rich mix. In an interview with the Irish Times, Crookes intelligently compared Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, first from Britain and later Pakistan, to the Irish fight for self-determination.
When Crookes does finally speak on stage in Leeds, she confesses her fear of “shite talk”. It’s unfounded: as the gig rolls on, Crookes eloquently introduces songs such as First Last Dance, a track that sounds like it’s ending a relationship, but is really a breakup with her anxiety disorder. “It’s been fun,” she quips, “the adrenaline has been great, but it just needs to stop now.” She greets an affectionate heckle with: “I won’t say ‘I love you back’ because that would be disingenuous, but I love the idea of it!”
For an artist with so much wit and spark, the mid-paced sway of Crookes’s music can sometimes have the feel of a John Lewis cover version of something that might have been more arresting. To its detriment, Juniper has, perhaps, lost some of the south-London Caribbean overtones of Skin. Both albums were produced by the British producer Blue May, an LA transplant who worked on Lily Allen’s West End Girl, and Skin fondly recalled the LDN vibes of Allen’s debut.
An uptick in pace finally arrives with the sinuous polyrhythms and keyboard hook of Fade Your Heart. Only in the encore, during a terrific rendition of Paris, do Crookes’s very capable five-piece band do anything surprising. Out of left field comes an expressive digital piano line, coupled with a surge of electronics. Just as everyone is loosening up, it’s time to go.
Before that, though, there is Crookes’s cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s Black Boys on Mopeds, which she played when she performed earlier on her tour in Dublin and has decided to keep in the setlist. The track takes Britain to task for institutional racism and the stop-and-search policies that led to the death of a moped driver, and widens its scope. “These are dangerous days / To say what you mean is to dig your own grave,” O’Connor wrote. Crookes introduces the song with vehemence: “This song was written 35 years ago and it’s still relevant now. There is extreme xenophobia happening in this county … it’s a problem everywhere; it’s in London, it’s in Dublin; I’m sure it’s here.” She plays, her clear voice accompanied by guitar, feeling every line. Her feet, it seems, haven’t failed her yet.
Photograph by Richard Saker for The Observer