Joy Formidable Live Album
Easily the best thing to spring from the UK last year, the Joy Formidable have been careening across out playlists for close to a year now, so it’s safe to say that when we got our copy of their new, now painfully sold-out live album First You Have to Get Mad, we were unbelievably ecstatic. Sounding every bit the shoegazey wunderkinds we’d come to know and love them as, in the live setting they compound their strengths with a raw energy that’s equal parts sweeping alt-rock masterminds and punk rock connoisseurs. With a flair for audience participation and sweeping emotional overtures to match grinding riffs and haunting, several-minute-long wails, the Joy Formidable clearly have the crowd on their side from the beginning, tearing through renditions of “The Last Drop” and “Cradle” to the hoots and hollers of all in attendance. Still, it is their grand overture, the final three tracks of “A Heavy Abacus”, a new, as-of-yet-unreleased face-melter, the single “Whirring”, which the band extend into a distortion-laden, transcendent display, and closer, the careful and emotional “While the Flies” that truly cement this release as more than simply a record for fans and an LP worthy of all fans of shoegaze or any alt-rock in general. Highly recommended you find a copy!
The Joy Formidable – “A Heavy Abacus”