The Joy Formidable Emerges from Isolation

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Near the end of 2019, The Joy Formidable finished touring its fourth album, AAARTH, and began working up demos for its fifth, Into the Blue. In early 2020, the alt-rock band traveled from North Wales—where it formed more than a decade ago and where it still spends much of its time—to Utah, its second home since about 2013.   

“I gravitated toward Utah because it’s so vast,” said Rhiannon (Ritzy) Bryan, the band’s guitarist and primary singer, during a Zoom call to North Wales. “I really like having a little space in my life where I can go back and write. I found a hotter, dryer Wales.” 

Meanwhile, COVID-19 kept its own timetable. “And then we ended up in lockdown,” Bryan said. “That sense of isolation, or of having to make sure you’re okay when you can’t control the external, is in the album.”

Introduced with the casually epic glide of the title track and seen off with the smoldering-to-blazing rumination and regret of “Left Too Soon,” Into the Blue reflects both the usefulness of solitude and the desire to be able to connect with others. Bryan’s guitar can churn up grunge chords or flit along prettily, while her vocals can recede into whispers or moan atop air currents.

“It’s quite an open album in the sense of throwing yourself into vulnerability,” Bryan said. “I wanted to explore those sides of myself that I’ve pushed down or buried, and that was an opportunity I could walk towards in lockdown.”

Bryan has fellow explorers in bassist and singer Rhydian Dafydd and drummer Matthew Thomas, solidified as the other two-thirds of TJF before the band’s debut album, The Big Roar, came out in 2011. Their rhythms support and surround her as much as the band members support each other. “They’re still dickheads and they get on my nerves a lot of the time,” Bryan noted with a laugh. “But we like being together, we’ve always sparked off each other, and we still feel inspired and energized. We enjoy each other’s company outside of music.”

In 2018, TJF extended that company to others with the TJF Music Club, via which fans can hear otherwise-unreleased songs, catch online performances, and finance the band directly.

“It’s been a huge part of us being able to keep creative and support ourselves financially,” Bryan said. “We were just writing so much, and we needed another way to share music. These dates we’re going on are the first in three years. It’s taken that time for us to feel like it’s right to go out.” 

The Joy Formidable perform 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9 at Cactus Club, 2496 S. Wentworth Ave. Tickets are $25 advance/$28 day of show at cactusclubmilwaukee.com.