The Joy Formidable, Aaarth
[Seradom]
Grade: B
The Joy Formidable launched itself into the hearts of amplifier aficionados with an aptly titled debut: The Big Roar, which piled one giant riff on top of another, running with a sound that would have conquered airwaves (and stadiums) in the Alternative Nation era. Seven years later, the Welsh trio has yet to match the sheer speaker-quaking power of its inaugural racket, but maybe it is for a lacking of trying; subsequent albums have pulled at the contours of radio rock, inching further away from simple verse-chorus-verse arrangements. Aaarth is the band’s most off-kilter collection of anthems yet, working in tribal drumming, stuttering and overlapping vocal tracks, and some of the Middle Eastern influences Led Zeppelin famously tried on for size when feeling adventurous. Admirable though the experimentation can be, The Joy Formidable still hits its sweetest spot aiming for the nosebleeds, like when the tinkling, affecting ballad “All In All” explodes into, well, a big roar. Maybe maturity is overrated, at least in the arena of arena rock.
RIYL: Smashing Pumpkins. Metric. Lollapalooza, the festival. Lollapalooza, the attitude.
Start here: Opening with a playful flush of strings, “The Better Me” rides the buzzing waltz of its verses to a cooing chorus, before hitting a wall of guitar. It’s irresistible. [A.A. Dowd]
Lala Lala, The Lamb
[Hardly Art]
Grade: B-
The joy of listening to Lala Lala’s debut album, Sleepyhead, was how drastically the sound changed from song to song. Lillie West took the vague concept of indie rock and just pushed it all together, using Lala Lala as a means of expressing everything she was thinking and feeling. With The Lamb, West removes the shagginess of Sleepyhead and replaces it with a sharper focus, making the danceable “Spy” and the ambient wash of “Dove” all feel part of a cohesive whole. While that adds a consistency to The Lamb that was absent on previous releases, it can also make sections of the album bleed together in ways that are uncharitable to West’s skillful genre-dodging. In many ways, The Lamb is a step forward for West, but here’s hoping its cleaned-up approach doesn’t end up reining her in too much.
RIYL: Frankie Cosmos. Japanese Breakfast. Indie rock in the most general sense.
Start here: Picking the opening track can feel like a cop-out, but the swells leading to the final chorus of “Destroyer” show West reaching new heights. [David Anthony]