The Joy Formidable
Wolf's Law
Rating: Meh
Welsh trio The Joy Formidable basically makes no qualms that they want to be a stadium rock band, their sound getting larger and larger with each release. Seeing them live is pretty intense experience, singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan holding court over the audience with an assured hand, the riffs getting harder and more pummeling, the wall of sound beating you into submission. And you can tell their supporting position on tours with Foo Fighters and Muse has only increased this need for stadium ready material. On their debut album The Big Roar, the waves and waves of guitars were already primed for such venues. That album, while containing some great singles, tended to rush through in a blur, focusing more on sheer brute force than melody. Second album Wolf's Law doesn't really change anything except somehow it seems to amp things up even more; adding strings, longer song lengths, Led Zeppelin allusions, and in grand Spinal Tap tradition turning everything up to 11. First listens are favorable due to the sheer force of will in these 11 tracks, but subsequent listens don't leave much of a lasting impression as the lack of hooks and melodies begin to unravel the dense ball of sound.
First track "This Ladder Is Ours" starts the record off promisingly with a gorgeous string intro before launching into a maelstrom of slick, amped up guitars.
But this promising beginning is trampled by the over the top ricocheting guitars and pummeling drums of "Cholla,"
air raid siren squalls of "Little Blimp,"
circular and repetitive guitar riffs of "Bats," culminating in the almost embarrassing heavy metal parody "Maw Maw Song" that borders on the edge of the sublime and ridiculous.
The bloat and excess of these tracks just makes the record a slog to get through. It is finally when the band calms down and focuses on the song itself and not purely the sound that the record finally takes root. "The Leopard and the Lung" adds piano accents to the guitars which mercifully drop out on occasion,
"The Hurdle" brings in a lovely bass melody underneath a swirl of sparkling synths and guitars,
while closing track "The Turnaround" softly ends things with gorgeous strings, acoustic guitars, and a martial beat.
More tracks like this would have broken up the monotonous slog of heavy guitar tracks that make up the bulk of Wolf's Law, but instead they are buried way in the album and come much too late to offer any sort of color or respite. Throughout the first half of the record, most of the songs end up blurring into each other, perfect background noise actually. Perhaps they will translate better in a huge stadium spectacle, or blasting out of a convertible on a summer's day, but in close quarters it becomes merely generic and overkill. I'm not ready to give up on them yet as the back half of the album attests to their ability to craft more interesting material. I just wish I didn't have to wait until the next record to find out.
Rating Scale:
Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.
Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.
Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.
Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.
Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.
Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.
Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.
