Review:

on 2011-04-26 CharlesMartel Said:

This Welsh threesome have been getting a lot of kudos lately for their latest offering, "The Big Roar". I suppose after their debut, which harked back to the dream pop days of the nineties tinged with enough guitar sound to get them labeled as shoegaze, there was a lot to be said for the stylistic change the band made. So why then did the band decide to include four tracks from their previous album on this one? It seems as if the band wanted to give newcomers an anthologic overview of their music starting with their first single release, "Austere" right up to the new stuff they have written for this album. But I will bet that if you have all their previous material this will really just piss you off.

It is not difficult to see what the Joy Formidable are trying to do here. They are making a pitch for the stadium and the arena. This is plainly where they see themselves as belonging and I suppose they shouldn't be condemned for their ambition, even if it may be a little hubristic. Several of the tracks on the album build gradually into a loud (and I mean LOUD) wall of sound before coming to a crashing conclusion. "The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade", which closes out the album in this epic style, is probably the most obvious example. So when you put together loud, crashing guitars, crescendos of noise and cataclysmic endings, all wrapped up in songs which have the length to sustain them, you can just see the massed crowd swaying in fazed out appreciation at Wembley or the Shea Stadium.

But for me the problem with "The Big Roar" lies not in the optimistic grab for superstardom, but in something more down-to-earth. And the Joy Formidable are not the only band to suffer from it. It seems as if so many of the female vocalists of the current time have all tried so hard to create a particular sound, one based on powerful delivery of lyrics, that they have all ended up sounding the same. I have lost count of the number of albums I have bought in recent years where I have been disappointed in what seems, on the face of it, to be a good album, becoming somewhat spoilt by characterless, shouty vocals from the female lead. And yes, the Joy Formidable's Ritzy Bryan falls straight into the trap. Even when she is not trying to outdo the guitars on the volume front, such as during the seven minute opener, "The Ever Changing Spectrum of a Lie", her voice lacks distinctiveness and passion and only really comes to life when the volume gets cranked up for the refrain.

"Buoy" provides a better frame on which the band hang their style, but from the almost doom-inspired opening to the guitars which sound like Bernard Sumner has cranked up the volume, the song somewhat fails to take off. You gain some respite right before the end with the curiously named "Llaw = Wall" which is a downbeat affair sung, for a change, by bassist Rhydian Daffydd, but it is soon back to the scrabbling ambition and we are now not far away from the album's closer which, as already described, brings this stadium rock taster to a close.

But sadly, their ambition is bigger than the band seem to have the potential to achieve, based on "The Big Roar". Aiming high is all well and good but it would appear from this that the band do not have the capability to reach the heights the album suggests they are striving for. When the sound is stripped down and listened to for what it is, there is not a great deal there. And without a vocalist with some originality and character, then the stadium may beckon but it will always be far away.
Rating: 5/10