What changed between “Moonlight Hotel” and this is the surrender itself: Charlie Noordewier stops running and lets the trance take hold.
Released on 23rd January 2026, “Joy and Despair” stops pretending escape is possible.
That debut single promised flight, floating under the stars with nothing to lose.
Eight months later, Noordewier drops the fantasy entirely, documenting what happens when you stop running and stay inside it instead.
The Devon folk singer brought in John Cornfield, a move that shifts the track away from campfire myth and into studio tension.
This is the same hand behind Muse’s string-drenched “Blackout” and Supergrass’s widescreen guitar sprawl, now applying Sawmills Studios precision to a song built on jazzy augmented chords and diminished unease.
The video makes the shift explicit, raw footage of the band tracking it live at Sawmills Studios, Cornfield behind the desk.
The arrangement refuses to settle, mirroring the song’s central admission: that being in love with someone can feel like being hooked through the cheek.
Noordewier’s lyrics don’t lean on metaphor when the body will do. Bones aching from the weight of someone else’s soul. Insides spilling in the back of a taxi.
The marriage vow corrupted into a death sentence. The Elliott Smith echo isn’t in the sadness.
It’s in how domestic details turn violent without raising their voice. That salmon hook line does more work than three verses of poetic abstraction could manage.
The chords cycle without resolving, a queasy loop the strings lean into instead of soothing.
Sitting on a mid-tempo pulse rather than a folk sway, the rhythm keeps circling instead of landing, reinforcing the sense that the song is trapped inside its own momentum.
It’s folk architecture holding pop instinct at bay, which explains why this sounds nothing like the barn-jam reputation that follows him.
The trance here doesn’t sound mystical. It sounds administrative, like paperwork you keep signing long after you know the contract is bad.
Noordewier’s skill is refusing to make the fire romantic when you’re the one burning.
“Joy and Despair” isn’t about falling in love. It’s about realising the trance was never escape. It was the cage.
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