Interview with The Joy Formidable

text: Michael Raine

It’s always intriguing when a singer’s off-stage demeanor is at odds with his on-stage persona.

The singer’s job on-stage is to be the focal point, the center of the action, the ring master keeping the crowd at bay and pulling them along on a journey.

On stage, Ritzy Bryan – singer, guitarist, and one third of The Joy Formidable – wails about, wringing every last decibel of noise out of her guitar, intensity in her eyes as her powerful voice leaps out over this massive wall of sound.

In essence, it’s the complete opposite of what I hear on the other end of the phone: a quiet, soft-spoken Welsh accent, pausing regularly to think of her answers, and punctuating her sentences with an inquisitory “you know?” Hard to imagine that she is the driving force, along with bassist Rhydian Dafydd, of one the most powerful trios that the UK has produced in some time.

Unlike some new bands (see Arctic Monkeys) who seemingly come out of nowhere and are on the cover of NME overnight, it’s been a long road for The Joy Formidable. The band is really the end result of two frustrating attempts at carving out a spot in the music business. Before the Joy Formidable, Bryan and Dafydd played together in Manchester, England’s Tricky Nixon (2003-06) and the short lived Sidecar Kisses (2006-07).

“They feel like another lifetime in a lot of respects,” says Bryan over the line. “[Tricky Nixon and Sidecar Kisses] were doomed by very, very difficult dynamics from the start, you know?” For good reason she declines to get into the specifics, only saying, “We were very unhappy about the song-writing process, and the feel of either of those bands just didn’t feel right.”

Disappointed and frustrated with their time in Sidecar Kisses and its quick dissolution, Bryan and Dayfdd headed back to their home in North Wales to write new songs and plot their next move. “It [felt] kind of like a clean slate because it marked the very first time that Rhydian and I had written together and also the first time that I sang lead vocals,” explains Bryan. “Given the circumstances that we had, it certainly had a kind of depressing six months or year between the two projects and the very onset of the Joy Formidable. It was very exciting and free of bullshit and egos and, you know, ridiculous things getting in the way. It was very much about being free with the songwriting and the music taking the precedent and we were very, very ready for that; we were hungry for it.”

It helped, of course, that Bryan and Dafydd had immediate songwriting chemistry, something that’s obvious in the Joy Formidable’s songs, which combine a massive wall-of-sound approach, filled with distortion and reverb, with poppy melodies and hooks.  “The minute you enter into a songwriting partnership with anybody, you have to fucking lay yourself bare; you kind of have to get naked with this person on some creative level. There’s not many people that you can do that with and get a reaction that helps you to be able to keep doing that. We felt very invigorated by it because certainly it’s not about the ego; it’s about really getting off on the music and the meaning.”

Bryan and Dafydd soon moved to London, recruited a new drummer, Matt Thomas, hit the UK live circuit, and starting releasing new music. From the start, the band – signed to Canvasback Music/Atlantic Records – were determined to do it their way, even if that meant waiting three years between their debut single and debut album, “The Big Roar,” releasing a live album before a studio album, and producing most of the music themselves (with a bit of help from producer Rich Costey of Foo Fighters, Muse, and Glasvegas fame).

“We’ve always had creative control and we still do, and I think that is the most dangerous thing; when you lose that you start becoming a puppet to any external force guiding the band,” explains Bryan. “If you get that and keep that, then the journey becomes your own and you can judge every day as it comes and not have any regrets.”

Luckily for fans, that journey includes a North American tour that kicks off on March 12 and 13 with two sold out shows in San Francisco and ends April 2 with a sold out show in Toronto.

“We’re not up there going through the motions and it’s not a job. It’s not like every night is just a replication of the night before or a replication of the album. It’s about the live show having a life and a momentum that is unique to the circumstances of that setting and that night and that audience,” says Bryan, explaining why she, Dafydd, and Thomas love to be constantly on tour and ending it with an example from their last American tour.

“We played a tiny show in a basement in Columbus, Ohio and I think it was, like, a Monday night and it had been raining all day and it was so gloomy. It was before the album and we didn’t know what sort of show this was and we saw the signs and all of that and thought it was going to be quite a relaxed affair. I think they were one of the most exuberant crowds of people that we’d ever, ever come across. I mean they were just so happy. That is something that we absolutely love about the live experience.”

Fortunately for those not lucky enough to get tickets, there’s a recently completed album  of new material set to come out later this year.

Given that Bryan describes herself as “a real creature of nature” and says her ideal location for a concert would be in a cave, the band retreated to rural Maine to record.

“A very nice, quiet part of Maine up in the woods in a log cabin away from it all with no phone signal and I think we were just very ready to get back in the studio and the album has been realized very quickly,” says Bryan, adding, “We’ve always certainly experimented with different sounds. We never wanted to plateau. We’re always looking to evolve as a band, and we’ve certainly done that with this new album.”

With determination, a new album, a well-honed live show, and a sound so big it would seem right at home on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, there is little rest in sight for The Joy Formidable. That’s why they’re taking it one day at a time.

“It’s always kind of dangerous to start by studying things too much or analyzing where you are. The only thing where we are completely preoccupied with is the music and making the record the best record we possibly can and making the live shows the best they can possibly be. And anything outside of that –  well you kind of just let it be.”