I’ve had a crush on the Joy Formidable since April 2011 I saw them in Phoenix. But it wasn’t frontwoman Ritzy Bryan’s adorable Welsh accent that did for me. You see, I have a thing for three-piece bands. Well, I have a thing for good three-piece bands. In a three-piece there’s no room for a weak link. Every player has to be on and every player has to be an expert at what they do. There’s no fourth instrument -- be it a rhythm guitar, keyboards, or something else -- to cover your mistakes.
And they have to compensate for not having that fourth band member whose presence can sometimes have an exponential effect on the band. It had been a while since I’ve seen a band rock as hard as the Joy Formidable does -- something I sorely miss in so much of today’s music -- and I can’t say I’ve ever seen another three-piece as loud and brash and intense as these three.
TJF released their second full-length last month, Wolf’s Law. Remember in the ‘90s when you would buy a new CD, pop it in your CD player, and after listening to what you thought was the entire album, you find that the band included a bonus, hidden track at the very end of the album? That’s what they did with this album’s title track. It’s a bit of a weird move for the album’s title track but it works because I don’t think the song fits that well with the rest of the album (which is great; check it out).
So here it is, the track I’ve been spinning all week, “Wolf’s Law” by the Joy Formidable:

Was anyone else disappointed with the ending? The video is so intense, emotional, and cathartic, bears are fighting, babies are birthing, and then it ends with the earth spinning and fading inside a human eye. Oh well.

Posted by Myke