The evening didn’t get off to a strong start. Laura J. Martin was the support. Laura is a flautist who plays pop folk songs. They’re clearly written to be quirky and there was something interesting about them, but never quiet completely interesting. Unfortunately, this really wasn’t the audience for her. She needs a respectful audience and unfortunately too many people weren’t interested and talked through her set. I’m not sure in a quiet environment I would have necessarily enjoyed her performance more, but tonight really didn’t give her a chance. One for another time maybe?

The reason for Laura being here, was that she features on the Joy Formidable’s forthcoming album and tonight’s small warmup gig was an opportunity for the band to try the new material.

In the main, the new material sounded reasonable. Nothing seemed to have the manic energy of their earlier material. But it was still interesting nonetheless. These small venue gigs providing the band with an opportunity to blow off the cobwebs after spending the last year recording the album and they effortlessly slipped back into performance mode. Ritzy especially seemed happy to be out again and was in a very talkative mood.

A nice departure was coming down into the crowd to play and acoustic encore. Interestingly, the crowd were able to keep quiet.

They’re touring later in the year and hopefully, so I look forward to catching them after the album out.