Joseph Arthur
Vacancy

Released two years after his debut album, Vacancy was primarily noted for winning the Grammy Award for Best Package of the Year, confirming Joseph Arthur's talent as a painter and graphic designer.
Vacancy is an e.p. containing seven tracks, with a total duration of about half an hour. But despite its short duration and simplicity, the album is rich in emotions and particularly intense.
Compared to Big City Secrets, the sound of Vacancy is rougher, less polished, in a word, "imperfect", an imperfection that is intentional, a kind of low-fi, to highlight the more sincere and personal approach of the compositions.

The effect is astonishing; Arthur manages to create an intimate and disturbed atmosphere at the same time, a peculiar atmosphere where melodies and words stand out like lightning, releasing impressive positive and healing energy.
As soon as the first track Hangin Around Here starts, it becomes clear that one is facing something beautiful and unusual. This particular song is rather catchy, almost Beatles-like in its rhythm and melody, and rather ironic and sharp in its lyrics.
The lyrics of the entire e.p. are a personal struggle with the pain of living, a fight between real life and the world of dreams. As the tracks flow by, from the intense ballad Bed Of Nails to the distorted suffering of Prison.
But the song that best represents the mood and themes of this small yet great work is the closing one, the wonderful Toxic Angel, an intense, troubled, deep composition that Arthur plays and interprets without excess, giving it a light and unique touch, almost magical, I dare say.
The beginning gives you chills with a harmonica that is a cross between Bob Dylan and Neil Young, while gentle electronic arrangements provide the backdrop to an acoustic guitar that accompanies a beautiful text, between hearts of ice, mad dogs, angels, addicts, and buried dreams; where what you need is the same as what you avoid; where salvation and condemnation are the same thing.