If you're fortunate enough to witness the force of The Joy Formidable in person then you will be enveloped by their sonic exploits. Seriously, they go all out for the "wall of noise" and considering there's only three of them, they make an impressive racket. That's probably painted a slightly skewed imagining as there's hooks aplenty in the tracks, most notably in the effervescent singles 'Austere' and 'Cradle'. In fact, if I had photoshop I may well have constructed a wonderfully informative Venn diagram displaying the neat overlap of 'shoegaze' and 'pop' that The Joy Formidable inhabit. Sadly, you must simply use your imagination instead. Or your ears. The plentiful Pure Groove audience appeared to enjoy the set and despite my high expectations, I was suitably impressed as they zipped through much of the EP.
On a minor tangent, Twitter (follow me - http://www.twitter.com/keephopeinside) is proving more and more useful. Winston of [winstonszen.com] directed me to his photos of the gig so have a photo. Shame he didn't get a photo of the balloons labelled moaning (geddit?). More gigs need balloons. All gigs need balloons. For the rest of Winston's photos, head [here]. Go visit his blog too.
The original 'A Balloon Called Moaning' ltd ed boxset has sold out but you can pick up one of the new run [here] for a meagre 7 quid. To whet your appetite, download half the album over at [Music Glue]. Their BBC 6Music Session is still good to go, download from my [Futuresounds post], and listen to the demo of 'Cradle' from early 2008 on [KHI podcast#6].
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