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.

Cutting Ribbons, a fellow Welsh band were support. I’d seem them before and although I didn’t dislike them, there wasn’t enough about them to recommend either. Tonight, I felt they were much better than I remembered. Possibly the large stage allowed them to put in a more energetic performance, or maybe they’re just tighter, but it was a pretty decent performance.

Tonight’s performance was a mix old material and new material from the forthcoming album. As expected in such as small venue, Joy Formidable’s sounded fantastic. Their energetic performance wowed the audience. The new material seemed to fit well with their existing material and everyone seemed to enjoy the new songs. Simply brilliant.

The evening started poorly. The first support act suffered from some poor sound, with the vocals far too low in the mix, so low I could barely hear them. Bear Driver who followed fared a little better but the sound still was muddy. Still Bear Driver sounded reasonable.

Bear Driver

With the sound problems I was concerned that the main event might be ruined by the poor sound. Luckily things picked up when Joy took the stage.

Like at SXSW their approach appears to be to batter the sound system into submission. Their feedback laden guitar sound seemed more suited to the Koko sound system and Byran’s vocals were full of the energy she showed at SXSW.

Joy are definitely a live band. Their debut album, The Big Roar, although decent, fails to capture the energy of their live set. Which is a pity, I think this may harm their chances of becoming a stadium-size band, something their sound is more than capable of filling.

Tonight’s gig had more ‘shade’ than their SXSW gigs, with the band joined by a harpist and a small choir dressed in robes and masks. This gave some of their song an extra dimension but didn’t detract from the immediacy of their sound.

It’s hard not to enjoy The Joy Formidable. If a band seems to be enjoying the experience I think it’s hard not to enjoy a gig and tonight they appeared to be really enjoying their homecoming gig. Tonight I definitely enjoyed the evening.