Ritzy Bryan of The Joy Formidable Brings The Dymanic (INTERVIEW)

In 2008, a trio out of Wales released their first record, an EP titled A Balloon Called Moaning. Several of those tracks they still include in their live set, songs such as “Whirring” and “Cradle.” For their 2011 debut full-length, The Big Roar, they rerecorded those tracks, plus two others off the EP, and the Joy Formidable haven’t slowed down since. Even on the day of our interview, they were getting in a little rehearsal time in Los Angeles before heading to New Orleans to play their first Voodoo Music & Arts Experience, luckily on the first day before the storms moved in on day two. “We’ve never played a festival in New Orleans so what are the crowds like, give us an insight,” singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan asks with a laugh. They are looking forward to playing on the main stage, ahead of Metric and headliner Florence & The Machine. For a young band, this is golden.

Bryan, a pixie of a girl with a blonde bob and a ferocious attack on her guitar, has called in to talk with Glide about the Joy Formidable. Having released their last album, Wolf’s Law, in January of 2013, they have been touring almost non-stop before finally taking some time to record a follow-up, which they hope will come out in early 2016. “We had a very difficult period in our personal lives making The Big Roar,” Rhydian Dafydd explained about the circumstances surrounding their 2011 debut. “Ritzy’s parents were going through a very painful, long-drawn-out divorce and also we lost both close friends and family. We made it in very tight, enclosed studio spaces and it made it a very frustrated and aggressive record.” Known for pouring their feelings into their songs, Bryan said the new album continues down this same path.

“Rhydian and I were making music together before we became a couple, so we have never experienced our relationship outside of the bubble of this band,” Ritzy contemplated following the release of the last album. “It can be a difficult dynamic to maintain and it sometimes makes me wonder – is our relationship based on the chaos of this band and our music, and if that were to change, where would it leave us?” The couple has since split but remain friends and bandmates, creating a new pathway to follow both lyrically and sonically on the upcoming release.

Bryan talked with us about the forthcoming album, the dynamic of being a trio, playing festivals and writing songs close to the bone.

I hear that you’re in the studio and working on some music

Yes. We are in the studio today. We’re actually just rehearsing. We’ve got a few days booked away until we head over to New Orleans, so we thought we might as well do some things, get creative. We finished the record. We finished it two days ago so we’re really excited. It’s all mixed and mastered.

Where did you record it?

We recorded it in North Wales, where Rhydian and I are from. We’re from a tiny little town called Mold in North Wales. That’s like the name the English give it anyway. It’s got a much prettier Welsh name [Yr Wyddgrug]. But we’re from like a tiny little town in North Wales and we built a studio there after being on the road for a really, really, really long time. We toured relentlessly. We toured constantly for four or five years.

It’s been quite a strange experience kind of going back to where we grew up. We’ve spent the last twelve months making this record and we’ve really loved doing it. It felt kind of free and refreshing and we engineered it ourselves, produced it ourselves and been going a bit loopy (laughs), going a bit crazy by the end. But I think you have to kind of feel a bit exhausted after a creative period anyway, you know what I mean. You come out feeling a bit exhausted but we’re very happy and very excited to share it. We just got it back all finalized, running order and everything we wanted in place, like two days ago. So it’s kind of wild after twelve months of making this thing to kind of go, oh, right, what do we do now? (laughs)

When do you expect to release it?

I think it will be the top of next year. We’re finishing some ideas about the artwork and like every record we ever do, we always like to do a special edition. So I think we’re going to take a month to just kind of get all that together. But I think the top of next year will be good; maybe February.

Do you think this new record is as revelatory with your feelings and opinions as your previous albums?

Yes. It deals with a whole other level of feeling and change. I think it definitely chronicles quite a lot of change because we came off the road, again quite happily exhausted from being three people quite conditioned to life on the road. It’s hard to explain. You kind of feel like you don’t really belong anywhere and you can certainly come off the road feeling a little bit like that. So I think it kind of chronicles our trying to belong together again in a different scenario to just being on a bus or in hotels. I think it took us back a lot to the very beginning of the band, cause when we first formed as a group in North Wales and then we moved to London, we all lived together. It was very much about that dynamic of being in each other’s pockets nonstop and there’s been no sense of us growing apart. But it’s a different kind of dynamic, it’s chaotic on the road. So I think it definitely feels like it’s an album where creatively and musically we’ve kind of come together again, which is kind of quite paradoxical to the fact that it’s the first record that we’ve written since Rhydian and I split up as well. So I feel a lot of change and a lot of coming to terms with a different dynamic and all the things that going through a breakup and finding love again, being back out and dating after that length of time. I definitely think the album has captured this new situation that we’re all in now. And we’ve done it quite intensely, which is our way. We don’t shy away from it. We might as well tackle it head on.

Other than going back to your roots in Wales, was there anything different you’ve done in regards to recording or production that’s not usually normal for you guys?

Yeah, I think the biggest difference is we’ve always been quite double-jointed and dynamic, I suppose, in the way that we’ve written all our records in the past. We’ve always felt quite stimulated and inspired by being on the road so it’s never felt that weird to us to have a mobile setup to record on. You know, we record all the time. We like the spontaneity of having like a mobile recording studio and grabbing those moments backstage and in hotel rooms. And I love that because it kind of captures a moment in a different way from maybe the way we recorded this record, which is very much been about being set up as three people in a live context.

So I think seeing us live as a band and the aesthetic that we have, I think this record has definitely captured more of that sensibility than maybe our past records. You know, those things that come from the live sense of the vibe and cool jamouts and section to section. I definitely feel like it has, it’s definitely very alive, this record, in that sense, that sort of live energy. I think that’s the biggest difference. It’s been really nice to shake it up, cause recording in the back of a bus or a hotel room is cool but it’s nice to take our time and be together in a different aesthetic for sure.

You’re playing on the main stage and you’re playing ahead of Metric and Florence & The Machine so there is going to be a huge crowd out there. Are you going to go bigger to connect or are you going to stay pretty much who you are?

I don’t think we ever go into any show any different. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing in a tiny club, a festival, I think you can bring intimacy to any situation. Like, we definitely like that connection when we play live. We like it to be a conversation with the audience. We like to feel it there with those that are going through this hour or two hours together. I definitely don’t like to overthink it, you know. It doesn’t really matter the setting. We’ve done huge shows, we’ve done tiny shows and we just like to get up there and play the tracks and make sure that everybody is fucking awake and that’s the main thing, you know what I mean. We like some sort of reaction from people. That’s what live music is all about. It’s not sitting in your bedroom watching YouTube or listening to the CD. It’s let’s wake up and feel something together.

Are you going to sneak in a few of the new songs in your set?

Yeah and we have been doing it. You know, we haven’t done that many dates this year. We’ve done a few festival dates, a couple of sort of smaller shows, and we’ve been playing tracks, and even one song that isn’t even on the record (laughs). It’s just nice to kind of try out some different stuff audience to audience. So there will definitely be a taste of that at Voodoo Fest.

You’re an energetic band but you’re a cerebral band. Do you think sometimes in big situations like a festival that the messages in some of the songs kind of get lost in that environment as opposed to an intimate club where you’re drawing people right into your breath?

That’s a really interesting question and again, like I was talking before, we are who we are and obviously we’re perceptive as well and we know that there’s obviously a draw to bands at festivals who are fun and it’s all about let’s have a party, you know. There’s obviously an energy that comes from the band and the tracks are evocative as well, they all talk about something, and I think we have to base ourselves and the hope that you can always combine the two. I’m a big believer in you can combine the two, that you can have a message that connects people and wakes them up and they feel a part of something. It can feel like a lot of things: it can feel fun, maybe a little bit daunting and maybe a little bit scary and then a little bit melancholic and a little bit joyful at the same time, you know. You can take people through a whole array of things, even in a festival situation.

What was more difficult about being a trio?

I think maybe it took a minute to figure out. I think when you decide you’re going to be a three-piece, I suppose the dynamic of the chemistry between the three of us as people felt so good that we never felt like changing it with another member. But there’s certainly a challenge that comes from being quite free when you record and by that I mean that we’ve always enjoyed trying different things during the recording process, with sounds and textures and production and guitar sounds particularly and the way that we can sometimes layer guitars to sound like different things. It gives a lot of added dimension to some of our recordings. Then you come to do that as three people onstage and I think that’s the point where I go like, oh fucking hell (laughs). Like, I’ve got to be quite a few things here in a live setting. It’s not daunting, there’s always a way, there’s always a way of managing to do it, you know. I don’t mind it being different live anyway, as long as the two stand up together. But there’s definitely a few moments where, what’s the best way to get the most out of this one instrument that on record is doing a lot of different functions? But we find a wa

You play guitar. Was that a natural progression to your singing or vice versa?

Definitely vice versa. I’ve always liked to write. I think that’s the main thing. I’ve always, always written from being very young and I suppose when you write, well, I suppose it doesn’t have to happen like that but I always felt like, the things that I was writing, the songs, that I should at least be playing them. My parents were like massive record collectors and there was always a lot of music in the house and I think it seemed very natural that I would kind of pick up an instrument. There were a lot of guitars, among other instruments, but they had a lot of guitars in the house so that was kind of pretty natural. Then I started writing songs and I suppose it kind of felt right that at least I can sing them (laughs). That’s definitely something that came a little bit later.

Your guitar playing is pretty wild. You’re not a wallflower up there when you play.

(laughs) No, none of us are

Your drummer, Matt Thomas, is pretty wild.

Yeah he is (laughs) and our bass player. After a show you kind of wonder who the most bloody will be and it’s always the bass player and we’re always like, “What the fuck have you been doing?” (laughs). He’s wrestling with those little strings on his bass (laughs).

What are your upcoming plans for after Voodoo?

We’ve got another few shows in November and then we’re going to finish for the year on the live side of things. We’re always into the visual side of this band and we like making accompaniments to songs and videos and the artwork, all of that being a big part of the vibe of our body of work, of the songs. We’ve always wanted to make more videos, if you like, more visual things for our tracks than we have done in the past because it’s always hard juggling things. It’s difficult to do a video for every single song but we’ve got a little bit of time before we kick back up again between December and January and I think we’d like to definitely do some visuals for some of the tracks cause we feel like they have a real visual part.

And you know, we haven’t cut a live album or a live DVD for a very long time. We haven’t done one since the first EP and considering how much we play, that kind of seems a bit fucking stupid really (laughs). We kind of feel like we’ve neglected that somewhere along the line but I think we’d really like to cut a kick ass live album at the same time, especially because the aesthetic of this album, that I think it would be lovely to have a really great live album going side by side.

Live photographs by Leslie Michele Derrough