Like a timebomb that’s ticked for too long, having been ‘ones to watch’ for the guts of three years, The Joy Formidable’s debut album runs the risk of being right noise, wrong time. But hey, it’s here, and you know what they say: a delayed release gives the greatest pleasure. Just ask Sting (actually, don’t).
Back to the subject at hand – we’re off to a startlingly good start with ‘The Everchanging Spectrum Of A Lie’. It begins with the bang of burst balloons, a taster of the racket to come, and quickly becomes a pounding epic built to knock the wind out of your sails. All the key Joy Formidable elements are present – the sheets of guitar, the imposing drums, topped off with a dynamism and a playing-for-our-lives vibe. The closing number pulls off a similar trick, giving The Big Roar a great top and tail.
The Welsh power trio clearly march to the beat of their own drum – but sadly it is a beat that becomes somewhat repetitive over the duration. Take ‘A Heavy Abacus’ and ‘Whirring’ – both strong songs individually, but coupled together they make for heavy going, and sound like carbon copies of each other. Ritzy Bryan can give a spirited performance, but more often than not her voice retains the same tone and lacks a little soul. It’s all a bit relentless. Wall of sound? More like a skyscraper constructed entirely of amplifiers being attacked by an army of drummers. They do mix it up with a little soft/loud, but you can hear the next explosion of sound coming a mile off. It works better when they try a little tenderness. First single ‘Austere’ doesn’t lay it on so thick, and their knack for a glorious melody and catchy hook reveals itself. The economy also gives Bryan’s voice room to breathe. Luckily, respite comes two-thirds through and the final brace ends things on a high note. At its best, this is cathartic alt.rock somewhere between The Breeders and a 21st Century shoegaze reboot. At its worst, it has all the subtlety of American jockrock from the late ‘90s. They have clear potential and, in occasional bursts, they are glorious. So, while their bite may not quite match their enormous bark as yet, you wouldn’t bet against album number two being the dog’s bollocks.