Joanna – Hello Flower: Album Review

Live4ever 5 December, 2025

Artwork for the Joanna album Hello Flower

3.5 starsss

‘Weather Vane’, ‘Hey Presto’ and closer ‘Gardeners’ World’ are rough edged Joanna gems from a time capsule nobody even knew was buried.

London’s always the reason.

Joanna’s story is an interesting one, although not unique.

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By the end of the 1980s, in what was a rare moment of inversion, the focus of music and youth culture had swung back around to the England’s north west; pollinating for years in relative obscurity, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays used acid house as the springboard to launch their groove infused tunes onto an unsuspecting nation.

As a new decade arrived there, so did a tsunami of A&R disciples, biro and 6 album deal in hand.

First they descended on the scene’s crucible Affleck’s Palace, then they bought some flares and kept their ears open for anybody saying they were going to start a band. Or at least that’s how the tale goes 35 years on.

Fitting the bill, Joanna – Neil Holliday (vocals) and Terry Lloyd (bass), work colleagues from Runcorn and Widnes, plus Leigh Music College students Tyrone Holt (guitar) and Carl Alty (drums) – were it seemed certain to be the next World Of Twist, Mock Turtles or Northside.

They didn’t lack hype. In a febrile environment where the next big thing just had to leave a tape behind the counter at Eastern Bloc, Joanna were championed by Jon Ronson of KFM, named by the NME as ‘the most popular band without a record out’, toured with Shack and sold-out Manchester’s iconic Ritz.

Now all they needed was to get themselves a demo of their own.

To record Joanna chose Widnes’ Pentagon Studios. Unfazed by their lack of experience (Holliday remembers: ‘I’d never sang into a mic before and had no clue about levels, amps or speakers’), the session still yielded enough material to put in anybody’s palm who wanted it.

Next on the agenda was a showcase gig in London.

Here’s where things took a turn. With the knowledge that talent spotters would be making up some of the audience, Holliday and co soundchecked, only for him to meet a girl he knew from school who’d relocated to the Smoke, as many Northerners had chosen to do for generations.

Interested, she listened politely as he laid out his dreams for the band’s dazzling future, then laughed. A bubble was most definitely popped.

Soured by the experience, Joanna’s performance failed to attract any concrete interest and they limped back up the M6.

Momentum ebbing, the group then wound down slowly, splitting a year later, their Pentagon demos then gathering dust in a friend’s loft. Until now.

Happens all the time, true. So why should you care? The 8 tracks which make up Hello Flower offer at least some fascination though beyond hard luck.

Opener If You Don’t Want Me To rattles along with a nasty funk groove and some patented Squire-isms, whilst Bandit Country goes longer on the skinny dance rhythms and sing song delivery of Shaun Ryder.

The other interesting quality to Hello Flower is in hearing the rawness of, for example, Mr. Sunshine – a harder edged psychedelic stoner joint with a 60’s pop edge – and wondering what the likes of a Street or a Leckie would’ve made of it.

It’s not all worthy of exhumation (particularly in the title track’s case), but Weather Vane, Hey Presto and closer Gardeners’ World are rough edged gems from a time capsule nobody even knew was buried.

The release of Hello Flower marks some kind of happy ending for Joanna, a band who’ve now got an answer to the question: ‘Whatever happened to..?’.

London was the reason. It always was.

Andy Peterson

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Tags:andy peterson, joanna