There’s something panoramic about The Joy Formidable‘s music – their mountainous, fuzzed out riffs and ferocious, earthy rhythms shrouded in ethereal haze. It sounds like where they’re from: Childhood friends Ritzy Bryan (vocals, guitar) and Rhydian Dafydd (bass, vocals) grew up in rural North Wales, surrounded by rolling green hills and little else. “There’s a beauty and a loneliness to the landscape there,” says Dafydd. “We had no neighbors growing up,” Bryan notes. “I think my parents looked for a house with no neighbors so they could play their music as loud as possible.”
“You could compare The Joy Formidable‘s sound to riding a rollercoaster: think dramatic holds followed by hurtling dips and dives that are a thrill to experience, even if you can see them coming a mile off.” – The Guardian
“After a decade that saw Britpop break down into Franz Ferdinandian funk, Arctic Monkeys insolence, and xx-ian austerity, the Joy Formidable project a certain guileless bravado rarely heard since the mid-1990s.” – Pitchfork