Photo: WENN.com
This was The Joy Formidable’s last UK date of 2012 and they bid the year farewell with a monumental performance. They won’t be back until early February, a fact that will have more than a few people wishing they could skip over the festive season entirely.
Having recently finished recording their new album, Wolf’s Law, which will be out in January, the group had the always difficult task of showcasing new material in between songs that fans have had more than two years to fall in love with. There’s two common approaches artists can take to this problem; either throw a couple of new songs in at the start before the ‘real’ set begins, or bury them between favourites unnoticed in the middle.
True to their nature The Joy Formidable do neither, instead opting to bludgeon the audience into receptiveness from the get go. In a nice bit of contrarianism they open with ‘The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade’, the closing track from their debut, and as soon as the grinding synth line hits they have the crowd in raptures.
Having set the tone, they’re able to deliver new songs unapologetically, not as hurdles to be skipped past, but highpoints. Refreshingly, The Joy Formidable seem to be assured of the improvements they’re making rather than panicking at having had to gall to evolve, something the seems to happen all too often to groups at this stage in their career.
This is summed up perfectly by ‘Cholla’, a new song about being reborn as a cactus (front-woman, Ritzy, explains: “I’d much rather come back as a spiky twelve foot motherfucker than an angel”) which gets such a grandiose live treatment, you’re surprised so much sound can even fit into the modestly sized venue, especially since drummer, Matt Thomas, who already had some metal inspired, maximalist leanings, now has a full blown gong in his arsenal. In fact, with the exception of one stripped down, lilting acoustic number brought out during the encore, the new material is just as epic in scope as ‘The Big Roar’ favourites such as ‘Whirring’ and ‘A Heavy Abacus’, and goes down just as well.
For all the bombast, wig-outs and sing-along breakdowns, the band’s biggest live asset is how obviously they enjoy playing. There’s always a thin line between ‘epic’ and ‘alienating’ and, given that The Joy Formidable make more noise than it should be possible for three human animals to produce, it’s remarkable how intimate and connected a performance they manage to give. Ritzy must have managed to make eye contact with practically everyone in attendance during her frenetic charges around the stage, and, when the crowd chant the hook of ‘Austere’ with such misdirected in enthusiasm that they throw a quiet break down completely out of time, the band are so touched they barely have the heart to drown them out and whip the song back into glorious shape.
