The Joy Formidable are attempting to follow a career path that's all but impossible for up-and-coming rock bands to traverse these days. They want to play arenas, and fill those arenas with punishingly loud and hooky guitar riffs and righteous, octopus-arm drum fills that roll over enormous crowds like a monster truck assaulting a line-up of hollowed-out Chevy Malibus. The Joy Formidable have already done this as an opening act for other bands-- most notably Muse during last fall's tour in support of the ridiculous The 2nd Law-- but they burn with headliner envy. It's incredible to see the Joy Formidable take that envy, turn it into pure energy, and shoot it out as a pulverizing Death Star ray in a small club.
The band's 2011 full-length debut The Big Roar is exciting, slickly packaged entertainment more akin to a big-budget action blockbuster like Skyfall than anything currently in vogue in the insular, down-sized world of indie rock. Roar's breakout song "Whirring" became a genuine hit on rock radio, and it's a whizz-bang distillation of the Joy Formidable's strengths: Singer Ritzy Bryan's whisper-to-a-scream vocal chops, the collision of instrumental force and melodic finesse, the energetic update of the most muscular forms of 90s shoegaze (specifically Mezcal Head-era Swervedriver and Ride's "Leave Them All Behind"), and an underlying confidence that this music deserves to close out large outdoor festivals around the world.
Looked at more cynically, The Big Roar comes off like it was-- in the words of Pitchfork's Stuart Berman-- "scientifically engineered to make the Joy Formidable sound like the Biggest Band in the World." The Big Roar certainly was assembled, not by men in white coats, but by industry people who shepherded the band through years of refining the album's songs. One of *Roar'*s best tracks, "Austere", dates back to 2008; other songs appeared on previously released EPs in different versions before given a final polish.
The Joy Formidable's sophomore effort Wolf’s Law arrives without the benefit of multiple rough drafts. And yet Wolf's Law sounds like it's been worked over even more extensively, though not necessarily in a way that makes it more commercial. If anything, Wolf's Law is a weirder, proggier record that explores a wider range of textures and sounds than the relatively monochromatic Roar. The shifting time signatures of the Zeppelinesque "Cholla" and the swaggering "Maw Maw Song"-- which alternates between verses that move stealthily along a rapid metallic pulse and a chorus that stomps about with bombastic insolence-- position the Joy Formidable as the heir to Muse's grandiose arena empire.
Not that the Joy Formidable is as insane as Muse, because no contemporary rock band is as insane as Muse. But they are clearly thinking in bolder and broader terms. The songs that hew closest to the first album’s blueprint-- like "Tendons" or the excellent, New Order-like single "This Ladder is Ours"-- are the most successful, though the penultimate track "The Hurdle" shows an improved mastery of rock-song dynamics, building from a mesmerizing strum to an overwhelming, heart-pumping climax. Most Joy Formidable songs start at heart-pumping and turn up the volume from there, but on the delicate "Silent Treatment", Bryan is able to convey that same intensity backed only with an acoustic guitar.
It would be an exaggeration to call Wolf's Law the Joy Formidable's "experimental" record, but it does stretch (and occasionally overstretch) the band’s formula a bit. The operatic, Days of Future Passed orchestrations of "The Turnaround" are a little much, as are the electronic squiggles shot like laser blasts through the surly "Bats". Nearly a third of "Maw Maw Song" is an extended, exceedingly noodly guitar solo that approximates the sound of a robot dolphin pleasuring itself with a light saber.
No matter the occasional excesses, the Joy Formidable's saving grace is its songwriting: "This Ladder is Ours" is composed of at least two great hooks-- the irresistibly melodic bassline and Bryan’s declarative chorus-- that fly out of the speakers like anonymous henchmen tossed off of a speeding train. The Joy Formidable might not have the most plausible ambitions for a 21st century rock band. But Wolf's Law offers enough thrills to suspend your disbelief.
