Review by Richmal Lamb
Listen Up Manchester rating 8/10
Looking for home-grown British indie-rock band that delivers true rock sensibility at a loud volume? Look no further than the welsh trio Joy Formidable. 2011’s “The Big Roar” landed with as much noise as the title suggests, and they are back with their second full player “Wolf’s Law”.
It doesn’t take long for the first guitar cord to hit in, 44 seconds into first song “This Ladder is Ours”. The pulsating guitar is everything you would enjoy and expect from Joy Formidable, but on this particular track Ritzy’s vocals are rather on the saccharine sweet side. The next two tracks Cholla and Tendons, although packed with great riffs and crunchy guitar, lack some of the underlying bite of the “The Big Roar”. As the album progresses, the jewels of this album are steadily revealed and you can see the band’s evolution unfold. Rather than increase the volume of an already big sound, new instruments, song arrangements and a tad of psychedelia are thrown into the mix. “Bats” grows and grows from a snappy opening verse into an intense lolloping final crunch at 2:40; “Little Blimp” pummels and buzzes with so much energy that you can only imagine how good it would sound live. This reviewer’s favourite track “The Maw Maw Song” has a interesting psychedelic feel to it; it speeds up, slows down, and spins around breathlessly. There are some slower paced moments on “Wolf’s Law”: “Silent Treatment” is an acoustic number that would have sounded even better if it had not hampered by the unnecessary doubled-up vocals. “The Leopard and The Lung” is a beautifully layered track and“The Turnaround” is a elegant closer with backing vocals, a sweep of violin, and the ability for Ritzy to show off her huge vocal range.
Whilst not a perfectly executed album, the many various attempts at experimenting with the already huge Joy Formidable sound are highly commendable. In the shape of “Bats”, the band has a track to rival “The Big Roar”s colossus “Whirring”. This is a record that will reward you again and again with each repeated listen; Wolf’s Law will certainly give you more than enough thrills to have you howling back for more.
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