It’s been a blustery overcast morning. The steady rain has formed rivulets and puddles all over the lawn. Hot cup in hand, I’ve opened the email and click on a link to a new song. Within seconds of sound waves pushing a few bars of The Joy Formidable’s stompy new Aruthrol single across my tympanic membranes, a smile cracks broadly on my face. Yes, that is a dulcimer I’m hearing, and yes, this is one of the many reasons that this band keeps me listening. As a gentle pinging of notes turns more brooding, more sounds fill the room and my memories immediately leap back to a time I’ve nearly forgotten—the 70s.
There’s something very retro in the new single, Tynnu Sylw. It takes me back to an era in rock music where bands like Fleetwood Mac liberally infused their efforts with a broad range of instrumentation to strike just the right mood. That’s the key word here—mood. It’s instantaneous and unrelenting.
Today that destination is Wales again. Tynnu Sylw, sung in Welsh, translates as ‘distraction’ and the song is ultimately a complicated love story. Aren’t they all? We all try and fail to put a fine point on what brings us together or pulls us apart. As Ritzy relates about the song, ‘It’s a love story complicated by distraction. Normally being in love, romantic love, distracts you from the outside world, [but] in this song it’s the other way round. I’m questioning whether love is ever enough and whether it will ever bring you happiness. Because sometimes you’re too screwed up to begin with.’
In Tynnu Sylw the compositional layers are deftly intertwined. Listen to the call and response in the first bridge; the soft background vocal eerily falls away to Ritz’s response. Listen for a breathy vibrato in the background on the verses—is that an organ? A metronomic rhythm simulates stomping feet and clapping hands, and when Matt’s drums finally kick in, he plays powerfully on the backbeat, sharply punctuating every measure with a punching snare. Ritz’s slightly reverberated voice carries above it all with light harmonic vocal tracks layered in behind the lead.
At the end of the song the floodgates are burst wide and the seventies overflow again with Donald Roeser-esque salvo of twangy overdrive and wah-wah drenched guitar riffs that sound as if they they’ve been resurrected from a BÖC album. Toss in a healthy dose of Neil Young (Like a Hurricane), some Lyndsey Buckingham and a dash of Hendrix as well. We’ve never heard Ritzy’s expressive chops let loose to this extent, and I’m presently in my twenty-somethingth listen and can’t stop. Hmm, maybe there’s more than one guitarist at work here.
Mind you, all of this is coming from their tiny Red Brick studio in North Wales where, as Ritz states, ‘[we] spend a lot of time together playing and getting into each other’s minds.’ ‘Cinematic’ has been used to describe the results of their work, and I tend to agree, though I might add ‘orchestral’ as well. Even before the birth of cinema, orchestral pieces that served to create an extra-musical narrative were frequently called ‘programme’ works. Of late, the trio have been hard at work creating expansive narrative landscapes in sound with a similar nature that spark the imagination and evoke the emotions. As a songwriting duo, Ritz and Rhydian seem to have tapped into a genuine creative aquifer in their new studio digs. To me, it’s nothing less than a real life transporter. All aboard and let’s hope the next destination is as satisfying as this one.
