Over recent years, James Smith has developed quite the catalogue of releases under the Good Good Blood moniker, split between Team Love Records and his own Fox Food label, but 2022’s CELEBRATE felt like the culmination of everything which came before. An album indebted to the previous records but somehow beyond them, as though each were merely a rung up the ladder towards this collection of songs. “I genuinely believe that there was no way I could have made this album at eighteen, twenty-one or even thirty,” Smith explained. “I feel like I have been building up to this album. Every release, every album, EP and single has been a step up. Another move closer to making this collection of songs. Another stride nearer to being me.”
Having arrived at such a space, Good Good Blood shows no signs of slowing down. Rather, Smith is looking to capitalise on his newfound confidence. New single ‘Johnny Was An Ocean’ finds an artist comfortable in his style and willing to experiment, pairing acoustic folk with glitchy electronics to tell the tale of the titular Johnny. An ocean creature caught in a net, “as cute as cute can get!” What unfolds captures some of the morbid strangeness of classic folk, where wonder and death exist on level terms, and a sense of fabulist morality hangs over every word.
Time begins to move real slow
Johnny starts to feel real low
Trying to find a way to go
But there’s no one who can show
How he can escape your net
Or how to stop being a pet
Take a look, I can bet
He’s as dead as dead can get!