BELLA1672 // 13 February 2026 Join Hands is a kitchen-sink fuzz-pop clusterfuck party record, the debut album from Brighton’s colourful alt-rock 4-piece congratulations. They say you have your whole life to make your first album… how do you cut that down to a 37-minute slice? Through its laser-focused 10-track runtime, the record treats rock music with irreverence and complete non-seriousness. Combining works in progress from the band’s primary songwriters bassist Greg Burns and guitarist Jamie Chellar, with some scraps dating back several years prior to the band’s inception, all members of congratulations have combined to to hone and flesh out these songs with vigorous performances and arrangements brimming with ideas and colour. Leah Stanhope’s formidable vocal performances can turn on a dime from spectrally angelic to hellish, and James Gillingham’s turn on the tubs combines featherweight intricacies with sledgehammer force. Shameless pop melodies fight with Jamie’s jagged wonked guitars, Greg’s thick fuzz bass rumble, crunched electronic beats and a smorgasbord of mangled synths and samples relatively new to the band’s sonic palette. These muscular songs take control of the band and wilfully steer them off on sharp tangents (Nevagunna’s blown out sax invasion, This Life’s this-thing’s-broken ending, Bubbles’s Bollywood excursion). With composition taking place over several years, the bulk of the record tracking was done in a single week to capture the pace and immediacy of the band’s rapturously received live shows. Then began a lengthy tinkering process, with producer Luke Phillips (Icebeing) on board to add power and spice treatments to the recordings and complete mixing on the album, tying the whole thing together with a big green/blue/red/yellow (take your pick) bow. <a href="https://congratulations2u.bandcamp.com/album/join-hands">Join Hands by congratulations</a>
