Checking back in with our favorite Welsh power-pop band…
[Video][Website]
[7.20]
Zach Lyon: Oh, hey, it’s one of my favorite songs of 2008. Weird! I’ve listened to that version so many millions of times now that the very slight differences on the 2011 release irk me enough to switch to the old one: her voice and the guitars are fuller and deeper now, filling up the whole room rather than just the holy death space right next to the amps; it’s harder to make out the individual strums rather than just the result; the backing dude-whoos are a bit harder to make out; the little solo mid-way sounds more electrified and contemplative, less angry. It’s still awesome, though.
[9]
Iain Mew: The Joy Formidable do their usual shimmering, pummelling noise thing to exceptionally fine effect, with the twisted guitar sounds after the verse particularly amazing. Then, as well as squeezing that into a smaller, even more intense space than normal they go and add a refrain which finds the perfect balance of harsh and seductive to match. Difficult to think of many single lines which sum up what a band are doing as well as “my vicious tongue cradles just one”.
[8]
Alfred Soto: The maelstrom that was “Whirring” lived up to its title. Few young bands do tension and release as adeptly, and better, make it signify as explode and makeup. This one, a hair’s breath less amazing, boasts a distorted guitar solo terrorizing the proceedings before the track hits the 1:30 mark. That’s difficult.
[7]
Al Shipley: After “Whirring” proved an unlikely sleeper hit on U.S. rock stations, all I want is to keep turning on the radio and hearing this wonderful band, and “Cradle” seems like a good bet of making that happen. I prefer when they stretch their legs for something a little more unpredictable, but they do concise and hooky well.
[7]
Brad Shoup: Seemingly all pre-chorus and bridge, this slab of in medias res songwriting lacks a really engaging riff or secondary sonic touches. The breathless sing-song of the verses is appreciated, but unfavorably exposes the vast reserve of the sonics.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Their name’s half accurate: every guitar and yelp and swerve of this is set to “joy,” but none of it is formidable, or lasting at all.
[5]
Hazel Robinson: Tries to build the sort of momentum that Doves or The Arcade Fire can pound out, with the kind of riot-dream Florence et al. have made a staple of both fashion and music editorial, but it doesn’t quite get there. All the way through I swing between quite liking it and being quite bored by it — it never hits the hook it seems to be seeking, distortion not hiding how derivative it is.
[6]
Jer Fairall: The Big Roar will likely end up making my Top 10 of 2011, if only because it would be impossible to deny an album with so many kick-ass tracks on it, but the sugar rush of having a new Joy Formidable single every few months this year has effectively eclipsed, for me, the considerable pleasures of consuming all of these songs in one album-sized gulp. “Cradle” is their sugar rushiest single yet, getting in and out in under three minutes with little of the pristine polish of “Austere” or “Whirring,” pummelling and then scaling back long enough to let Ritzy Bryan leap anxiously through an evocative verbal mess of “pretty pretend”s and “vicious tongue”s. All the while, a wiry Pixies guitar abrasion fights to make itself heard through the blare, with only occasional success.
[8]
Sally O’Rourke: It’s nonsensical to speak of a progression over the course of the Joy Formidable’s 2011 singles when they all appeared on the same EP nearly three years ago. Nevertheless, each single is somehow more focused and catchier than the one before, till finally the hooks in “Cradle” succeed at overpowering the band’s standard bellowing-at-the-heavens production. As usual, Ritzy Bryan’s voice is a little too timid to shore up the track’s heaviness, but now that restraint mirrors the song’s theme: she’s mad as hell, but for whatever reason, she’s biting her tongue.
[8]
Ian Mathers: Florence had a drumming song, but this is a running song; doesn’t the chorus just feel like legs extending, feet pounding pavement, that clean-limbed surge as you get your second wind? They’re on a see-saw in the video, but that’s exactly wrong; even when the guitars halt momentarily, the song is headlong, barreling. I’m going to go find a treadmill.
[9]