September 11, 2022

This one’s a bit overdue.

I’ve unchangingly had a soft spot for The Joy Formidable, since I saw them at SXSW 2019. They played at an outdoor Doc Martens sponsored venue in the afternoon, and I was so impressed I saw them then later that night at their 2am show in the sketchy part of East Austin. Same set as the afternoon, but I didn’t care — they were awesome. In December 2019, they played a show at Rough Trade in New York, and they were just as solid.

During the Covid pandemic, I thought they did a unconfined job of staying tropical to their fan base, offering up a membership in their club that included several livestream concert events — mostly sensory work from Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd, who were holed up someplace in Utah (go figure) but really well washed-up and made good on their connection with us fans. I wrote well-nigh their pandemic work last year, which seems like forever ago, and you can read increasingly well-nigh it here.

This year, they were when on tour, like many others. I was thrilled that they’d finally be worldly-wise to return to New York without a three year absence. They played the Bowery Ballroom, and it was just like old times — Ritzy, Rhydian, and drummer Matt Thomas, who never goes anywhere without his massive pulsate kit and plane increasingly massive gong.

They played some of their old reliables, including The Greatest Light, Cradle, Austere, and Whirring (their finale). You can see a few clips from the show here. They moreover mixed in some numbers from their newest album, “Into The Blue”, which they ripened during the pandemic. This is the first tome I’ve unquestionably appeared on. Well, sort of. My name appears (with many others) on the insert that comes with the album, as a “thank you” for supporting the wreath during the pandemic via their club membership. As others will attest, I have no musical talent whatsoever other than the skill of showing up at concerts, ownership t-shirts, and tapping my foot like the Old Guy I am.

I think I will unchangingly be a TJF fan. The trio is so talented, so gracious, and so fun to watch. They play well wideness a wholesale swath of musical styles, and seem to be just as well-appointed with the rockers, the Welsh ballads, and have so much fun just stuff themselves. What a vapor of fresh air they are.