Since releasing their sweeping second full-length ‘Wolf’s Law’ in 2013, Welsh trio The Joy Formidable have had a bit of a rough time of it. In between labels in the UK, and putting in the hard yards touring the States, the North Wales natives decamped back to Mold in 2015 to record the more sombre, reflective ‘Hitch’. That album was soaked in the strains that were weighing heavy on the group after eight years of relentless hard work.
Now, energised by a burst of creativity and the grand surroundings of the Utah wilderness, The Joy Formidable are back with their fourth album ‘AAARTH’, a more concise record that leaps out of the speakers, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and hurls you into a world of colour and chaos.
“This album is really a transformative one for us,” bassist Rhydian Dafydd explains. “We wanted to catalogue a different chapter in our lives, and this one definitely did that. There was some personal stuff going on, which I won’t go into but it was sort of traumatic stuff. I think we needed to sort of shed the skin a little bit.”
‘AAARTH’ (named for the Welsh word for ‘bear’) harnesses the primal natural and human energies that have always provided inspiration for the band and traverses terrains that encapsulate the many faces of The Joy Formidable. With swirling rockers (‘Dance of the Lotus’), soaring anthems (‘The Wrong Side’) and the stately arpeggiated piano of ‘Absence’, this is a record that blends different tones to create a dizzying mural of sound and song. The different styles toss the listener from side to side, but this is a band who are assured enough in their craft that they never lose control.
“With this record, it’s almost pieced together like a collage,” explains Rhydian, who has had a hand in the band’s visuals since their early days. “That was with the lyrics as well; it’s not just a narrative, there’s a stream of consciousness to the lyrics and grabbing moments as they happen, all these fleeting moments. And I think we often look to nature for symbols for what’s going on internally.”
“It’s very wild,” vocalist Ritzy Bryan says of the Utah landscape where she has spent the past year finding inspiration for the new record. “It feels like true wilderness. North Wales has an element of that where you can kind of get away, and get off the grid, but not compared to Utah. It has to be somewhere between enjoying the isolation, and being quite smart because you can get lost and you can fry in the sun quite easily,” she laughs.
