As you might expect, it was with great joy that It’s All Happening heard the news that The Joy Formidable would be releasing their sophomore album. Having spent the last couple of years gathering rock celebrity fans with their intense and angsty music, they are back with Wolf’s Law, an absolutely stunning album, full of celestial grandeur and mountainous brutality.
Things kick off in traditional Joy Formidable style, with swirling orchestral sounds and crashing drums, bubbling up to an impressive and dizzy beginning in the form of This Ladder Is Ours. Second track Cholla was released as a teaser back in 2012, and its spectacularly fiery riffs and mixture of tempos and temperaments were not deceptive. The Maw Maw Song is an earworm if I have ever heard one, it’s syncopated beat and twang compulsive rollicking along, its dominant riff simplistic yet powerful. Coming just after the slower Silent Treatment, it marks the start of side 2, as the artistic packaging informs us. A beautiful end to the album comes in the form of The Turnaround, an immensely epic, brooding, yet unsentimental song, foreboding and formidable.
Ritzy, Matt and Rhydian have done it again.

Francesca Baker

I feel that this will be like reviewing a child. Not just a child, but my child. How can you pass judgement on one whom you’ve watched grow, cherished their early sounds, and sung the praises of over the last couple of years, and are now being grabbed at by the big beasts, the likes of NME, Radio 1 and mainstream media. Ritzy, Rhydian and Matt would laugh at such molly-coddling: their epic grandeur and ferocity on and off record show that they have always been able to take care of themselves, and their debut ‘The Big Roar’ confirms this.
Characteristic clicks and rumbles open the album, erupting into ‘The Everchanging Spectrums of A Lie’, one of the album’s highlights. Ritzy’s yearning and wistful ‘love, love’ over the bridge is huskily anaesthetizing, over intense bass lines in this nigh on 8 minute long piece of head spinning psychedelic.
A reworked and revamped ‘Austere’ is meticulously executed, although long time lovers of the band may feel that it lacks some of the raw grazing that so authentically attack throughout the demos and live shows. Cradle, another live favourite, comes in late in the album, its chiming chords and chanting rhythm soaring boisterously. The sound of lustrous steel lulls us into ‘Whirring’, the song that defines the sonic mayhem and head spinning freneticism of The Joy Formidable, Matt’s whirlwind fingers dazzling behind Ritzy’s soaring snarl.
‘Buoy’ has a slower start, but don’t be deceived into thinking this will be a sweet ballad. Whirling bass sounds like being stuck in a ghoulish helter-skelter, combined with birds wailing in the background to a sense of filmic malevolence.
Rhydian comes to the fore on ‘The Big Roar’ more so than on the demos and EPs, taking the lead vocals on the atmospheric and intimate ‘Llaw=Wall’, but it is Ritzy who continues to take centre stage, a core of the fire.
The thunderous and chiming beauty of ‘The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade’ closes this glorious album, the sonic turbulence buzzing away to reveal an expansive vista. Somehow simultaneously reflective and acutely boisterousness, the layered tangents that flow and fold throughout The Big Roar show the band’s expansive talent. If you’re new to The Joy Formidable, you’re so lucky. Be prepared to be swept away. Wow.

It’s All Happening have long been avid followers of TJF but my what-will-I-ask related fears evaporated when Ritzy filled me in on the last 12 months, which have been, a “new level of busyness.” Since September 2009 they have headlined the Electric Ballroom and The Garage (the latter of which they recorded and released as a live album), released two singles (soon to be a third), signed to a record label, opened the Other stage at Glastonbury, played Reading and Leeds, toured Britain, the USA and Australia, and recorded their debut full length album. Oh, and they played with Paul McCartney and Manic Street Preachers at the Millennium Stadium. It turns out that we did have a bit of catching up to do, after all.
New single ‘I Don’t Want To See You Like This’ will be released on October 11^th, but the trio still haven’t recovered from the experience of recording the video in south Wales, with it reminding Ritzy of some all too recent memories. “Oh, no…the video has been such a traumatic time! We really haven’t learnt about filming outside in Wales, the video for Whirring was a fucking nightmare too!”
A series of electrical storms, a hysterical crew and a damaged £200,000 camera later and the video was finally finished. The single has recently received Radio 1 airplay and this, along with headlining the upcoming NME Radar tour, demonstrates the increasing popularity of the band. Not that Ritzy is overawed by it, “It’s good but we’ve not really given it much thought. We’re just looking forward to another headline tour, it doesn’t matter what the name behind the tour is!” The band holds a similar opinion regarding their record label Canvasback Records who, despite being sure that they are the right label for them, Ritzy sees as the “boring business bit behind the music.” Throughout the interview it becomes clear that The Joy Formidable only care about the music they produce; not the money they make or press they receive.
January 2011 sees the release of the long awaited full length debut album, The Big Roar, to be accompanied by a headline tour. Three versions of the album will be released: a regular version, a box set version and a mystery third version (unfortunately Ritzy would not disclose the details of this!). Having already released ‘A Balloon Called Moaning’ (a teasing mini album) and ‘First You Have To Get Mad’ (a fantastic live album) it is of course no surprise that TJF have decided to go down the unorthodox route of releasing three versions of ‘The Big Roar’.  ‘A Balloon Called Moaning’ was greatly influenced by Mold, Ritzy’s and Rhydian’s home town, but a hectic touring schedule has meant that the new album was “written over a few locations.. London, South Wales, and whilst we were away on tour, where we had to grab sketches of them and then capture them properly once we got back”. This range of places and experiences has meant that ‘The Big Roar’ has “more range than ‘A Balloon Called Moaning.’ And it is much more aggressive, mainly thanks to Matt!”. Matt joined on drums at the start of 2009 and has helped TJF jump up to the next level, with his energy and charisma really shining through in the live performances and complementing the power and vivaciousness of Ritzy and Rhydian. Just ask Ritzy’s guitar, which took a festival battering and didn’t survive this year’s Reading and Leeds performances which was part of a “great summer.. the Glasto weekend was completely surreal, it was like a double head fuck. We supported Macca and Manic Street Preachers in the Millennium Stadium and then opened The Other stage at Glasto. Everyone was so down to earth. It was very inspiring!”
 In July 2009 I sat in a field in Kent interviewing The Joy Formidable at Hop Farm Festival , discussing who they would love to play on the same bill as. After a few minutes Ritzy, Rhydian and Matt decided upon The Manic Street Preachers. Within a year TJF had achieved this dream – this now seemed like a logical place to finish the interview with Ritzy. In hindsight, I wish I had asked what they hope to achieve in the next twelve months, but whatever it is I’m pretty confident this gifted trio are going to achieve it.  And that’s why I love them.