The Joy Formidable
The Big Roar

Release Date: 2011 | Tracklist

The area of loud is a tricky beast to pin down. You could go the tried and trusted death/hypersonic/global cataclysm metal route but this can often be a fool’s errand of noise that quickly ceases to be effective against all but the most socially inept individuals who will bore you to attempted suicide going on about some obscure group from upper Norway that has an angry walrus as a drummer. It’s the cul de sac of desensitised repetition that one should avoid. The route of copious reverb and layer upon layer of guitar tracks however can reap rich rewards, don’t be to derivative though or you’ll end up sounding like a wannabe Bloody Valentine shoegaze outfit with all the originality of a bottle of coke in a coke factory. Hit the sweet spot and you’ll get The Joy Formidable, female vocals with a delicate fragility coupled to an overall sound that will register on the Richter scale.

A mixture of the best of the group’s tracks culled from mini album “A Balloon called Moaning” and dashings of new output “The Big Roar” certainly cannot be expecting a hearing in front of the false advertising committee anytime soon. The opening track even begins on a note of clanging doors and misfiring engine sounds just in case you were lured into expecting nothing but the most antiseptic of affairs. Ritzy Bryan wails almost mournfully over a continuous sonic assault of feedback and distortion and although some tracks like the opener or indeed the extended “Whirring” could do with some pruning shears you’ll happily forgive it when push comes to shove.

Indeed it’s this constant hurry along attitude that is essential to the albums success and its absence in the albums single clunker Llaw=Wall makes the song an almost unlistenable example of the worse tendencies of introspective self pitying English rock. It does pick up near the end but the damage has already been done and if you have any sense you’ll be skipping it in future listens. On the other end of the spectrum is “The Magnifying Glass” which sees’s the group stripped down to a grunge infused 2 ½ minute blast. It’s a sign that cacophonous enjoyment is something this band can deliver in more than one form

If you have already fallen in love with the mini album then the fact you don’t get more new songs to enjoy can be a slight disappointment but even the older numbers get a reworking either in production or structure. For people who have yet to check the group out a wondrous wall of noise awaits. If they don’t fulfil your needs then I’m unsure what else could, a MILAN anti-tank weapon going off in your face maybe but I wouldn’t recommend it.

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3.7 great

Rank: #0 for 2011