Joan Of Arc

Joyful Noise Recordings announces a Joan of Arc box set, A Window & A Mirror, out July 12th. This is a complete collection of the band’s seminal material from their debut in 1996 through 2002 (their “Jade Tree years”), and features 1996’s A Portable Model Of, 1998’s How Memory Works, 1999’s Live in Chicago, 1999 2000s The Gap, and 2003’s So Much Staying Alive and Lovelessness. The set comes in a custom-built wooden box featuring laser-etched artwork, each signed by band-leader Tim Kinsella, and includes deluxe colored vinyl pressings of each aforementioned record. The box set will also include a exclusive, physical-only 7” of Red Blue Yellow, the first name and iteration of Joan of Arc that followed the break up of Kinsella’s previous band Cap’n Jazz, plus a 132-page hardbound book and access to the “Joan of Archive.”

Only one person, Tim Kinsella, remained in Joan of Arc from its 1996 debut to its final days in 2020, however every musician and behind-the-scenes collaborator that played a role in Joan of Arc (a number that exceeds 100) influenced the band’s direction and character. Joan of Arc is the result of Tim’s work with a community of radical artists who came to him from the underground, or were found there after he sought them out to engage in strange and memorable experiments in sound. No two Joan of Arc albums sound identical, but listening closely to this work we begin to trace out the footprint of ideas that took root on one LP and blossomed into the next.

With A Window & A Mirror, Joyful Noise tells part of the story and resurrects the early phase of the group’s evolution. Excavated from Kinsella’s grandmother’s basement, this collection includes his intimate journals written in real time as these albums came together, and a long lost Joan of Arc artifact: Red Blue Yellow, a rare recording captured at a notorious show where Kinsella and his co-conspirators would convene for a one-time performance under the name Red Blue Yellow, following the demise of Kinsella’s pioneering emo band Cap’n Jazz. Red Blue Yellow promptly broke up and became Joan of Arc. Red Blue Yellow is the missing link between Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc and is only now, for the first time, seeing the light of day.

Also included in this collection is access to the “Joan of Archive,” a digital collection of literally hundreds of demo-tapes, live recordings, and musical meanderings mapping the band’s evolution. The group meticulously cataloged their development during this period, and through A Window & A Mirror, this incredible insight will be offered in full for the first time.