Click to listen to The Joy Formidable's The Big Roar
Love is "the ever-changing spectrum of a lie," sings Ritzy Bryan on her band's full-length debut. It's a fascinatingly jaded notion. But the 27-year-old frontwoman could be praising gas chromatography for all it matters when her guitar erupts, its bee- swarm noise blasts careening into multi-orgasmic crescendos. The Big Roar recycles and magnifies tracks from Joy Formidable's 2009 EP, A Balloon Called Moaning: The multitracked vocal attack of "Austere" is transformed from pub brawl to arena prizefight; "Whirring" gets expanded into a six-minute-plus epic of face-melting, Sonic Youth-ful jamming. The riffs are more memorable than the songs, you say? Does it really matter?
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