The Just Joans were formed in Glasgow in 2005 by songwriter David Pope. Naming the band after Daily Record agony aunt Joan Burnie’s ‘Just Joan’ column, work immediately began on a number of lo-fi tracks dealing with love, rejection and everyday angst. These would eventually emerge as The Just Joans’ debut album, Last Tango In Motherwell. Released in 2006 on tape cassette to a small number of friends, one – Chris Gilmour – was so taken with the collection that he set up his own label, Ivan Lendil Music, specifically to circulate a CD version to a wider audience.

As he advanced from singing sad songs in his bedroom to singing sad songs live, David recruited Chris Elkin as a guitarist. Shortly after, he would add younger sister Katie Pope as a vocalist, alongside bassist Fraser Ford – with all four remaining in the band to this day. Their presence helped to build a reputation on the indiepop scene, and, in 2007, The Just Joans joined WeePOP! Records. During their eight years with the DIY label, they released a series of handmade EPs including Hey Boy...You’re Oh So Sensitive and Love and Other Hideous Accidents. The band also revisited their first LP, rerecording it, reordering it, and retitling it as Buckfast Bottles In The Rain.

Some much-loved band members have come and gone in the time since, not least Doog Cameron, who personified the manner in which The Just Joans tread a fine line between the heartfelt and the dangerous. However, it is the more recent additions, Jason Sweeney on drums and multi-instrumentalist Arion Xenos, that have helped elevate the band to a new level - both in terms of the studio and the stage. Completing the journey from shambling two-piece to accomplished sextet, the band continue to win fans with their mischievous lyrics and tender melodies. Embracing Scottish culture at every turn, the band were perhaps best described by Is This Music as ‘the missing link between The Magnetic Fields and The Proclaimers.’

Since moving to Fika Recordings, The Just Joans have released a variety of singles and, in 2017, You Might Be Smiling Now..., their first new LP in a decade. Much acclaimed in the music press, Highway Queens thought it to be ‘the perfect Glasgow kiss’ while Uncut identified the record as the point at which ‘Stephin Merritt lies down with The Vaselines.’

2020’s LP The Private Memoirs and Confessions of The Just Joans was a veritable smorgasbord of misery, longing and unrequited love; stories of small town resentments, half-forgotten school friends, failing relationships and awkward workplace conversations, entering new territory with the addition of brass and strings.

2026 sees The Just Joans release Romantic Visions of Scotland, inspired by a grandiose exhibition title spotted on Glasgow buses in 2019 for a show at the National Museum of Scotland called Wild and Majestic: Romantic Visions of Scotland, the new album arrives six years later as a collection of semi-autobiographical snapshots from the Central Belt of Scotland. Whilst some of the details have been exaggerated for comic (or tragic) effect, the songs are based on personal experience of mundane failings, bitter regrets and missed opportunities that make up an unremarkable life.

Selected press

"The Just Joans have documented the romantic pratfalls of a generation of indie kids with a sardonic wit and a shambling musical style where Stephin Merritt lies down with The Vaselines. They're at their best on Big Blue Moon, Katie Pope's voice soaring above bathos like the stars coming out over Sauciehall Street." Uncut

"it’s a refined downer, enriched by self-lacerating wit (I Only Smoke When I Drink), indie-boy piss-takes (Sleeperbloke), story-song skills (unwanted-pregnancy tale Johnny (Have You Come Lately)) and briefly off-guard touches of synth-pop wistfulness (Big Blue Moon). Best of all is Spector-on-a-budget shimmy No Longer Young Enough, a wise-up call for middle-aged dreamers with just one caveat: the Joans’ own cynicism has improved with age. But don’t tell them, or they might go cheering up." Record Collector

"You Might be Smiling Now… is a sharper, on-the-nose take on indie pop, proving the Just Joans may be older, but, in their own whimsically nostalgic way, perhaps no wiser, and for that we can only be glad." The List

"You Might Be Smiling Now... is lyrically smart, funny, and terrifyingly relatable. The Just Joans might not be universally understood, but for those of us dealing with the grievances of getting older while simultaneously not feeling ready for adulthood, this is our affirmation." The Skinny

"The similarities with Belle & Sebastian and Camera Obscura in procuring breezy pop melodies combined with intelligent wordplay exist, but on their second album The Just Joans draw more similarities to the American counterpart of all of the above [Leonard Cohen] - Stephen Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields." Soundblab

"They’ve dredged up their youthful feelings and animated them in both honest and affectionate tones, and it makes You Might Be Smiling Now… a joyous rummage through swathes of bleary nostalgia." The 405