Release Date: January 24, 2011
Their sound can be cloudy, but the band The Joy Formidable gets the mood across. They are a beast speaking in epic choruses and heavy guitars in their debut album The Big Roar, skirting the line between noise and melody. At certain moments songs will fall too far on the side of inarticulate loudness, but most tracks on the album are aggressive, quality tunes.
Rock fans have much to be happy about.
The Joy Formidable’s music is best described as prog-rock with grunge leanings. The band consists of three members with an approach to sound that works well. Tracks like “Buoy” breathe menace with raw speed and interesting dynamic shifts. A guitar melody runs through the track, with vocalist Ritzy Bryan matching its intensity. The result is a cool hook that rides nicely on Matt Thomas’ hard hitting drums. The band structures the song well by pulling back the decibels only to bring in the full force of all three band members at the end.
Bryan’s voice lends the music its epic and hopeful quality, and she mostly manages to rise above the maelstrom of drums, guitar and bass. The band sounds like an army despite consisting of only Bryan, Thomas and bassist/vocalist Rhydian Dafydd. Much of it can be attributed to the skills of Thomas who manages to drive songs with complex rhythms without slowing down. Bryan is also the band’s lead guitarist and her ability to shred in songs like “Chapter 2” deserves praise. It’s a testament to her talent that she can play and sing at the same time without losing the effect of either.
There are moments, though, on Roar where they go a little too far with the volume.
The first track, “The Ever Changing Spectrum of Life,” builds up nicely with some percussive noise, a light touch of synth and a rising guitar fading into the first verse. Here Bryan’s voice is complemented nicely by the muted guitar and simple drum rhythm. The song then throttles back and forth between the verse and chorus, but suffers a bit in the finale with a sustained escalation for the last two minutes. Notes and rhythms can be heard, but the intricacies become hard to pick out.
“Whirring” is another song where the music loses steam because of sensory overload. The song starts with a simple chord structure, and quarter note beat and then goes into another epic chorus. The song then shifts in the middle and the band starts ratcheting up the tension by half steps. That tension never gets resolved though and the song loses its muster before it eases up.
As a whole The Big Roar is a good, but flawed album with music that reflects its title. It’s stuffed with epic highs and taut lows that should leave many rock fans satisfied. Unfortunately, the finer details too often get swept up in the chaos, and that’s a real shame considering the quality musicianship between the three band members.
The Joy Formidable – The Big Roar tracklist:
- “The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”
- “The Magnifying Glass”
- “I Don’t Want to See You Like This”
- “Austere”
- “A Heavy Abacus”
- “Whirring”
- “Buoy”
- “Maruyama”
- “Cradle”
- “Law=Wall”
- “Chapter 2”
- “The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade”
