Worthy Of A Bigger Audience: Music: The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable

Keeps getting better and better with every listen.


The Big Roar featuring the passion and energy of a live performance.

From the moment I heard the first chorus of The Everchanging Spectrum Of A Lie I knew I was going to like this album. I just never realised quite how much. Within a few listens it was obvious that this was one of those albums which just gets better and better with every listen. By approximately the tenth listen I had realised it was going to be one of my favourite albums of the year, and by approximately the twentieth listen I realised it was possibly one of my favourite albums of all time.

Such is the strength of the songs that The Big Roar could easily pass for a collection of singles. In fact if someone had told me this was a Greatest Hits collection I wouldn’t have doubted them for a second.

Not satisfied with simply creating an album’s worth of excellent tunes, however, The Joy Formidable have really thrown themselves into every song with the result being that many of the songs have the passion and energy of a live performance, whilst maintaining the quality production of a studio recording. The end result is that you get the best of both worlds and you could say ‘The Big Roar’ sums it up perfectly.

Usually I would list a few highlights but if I did that with The Big Roar I would be pretty much listing the entire album. In fact when I was waiting in the queue to see them live, a PR for the band asked me to fill in a short survey and one of the questions asked for my favourite song. That proved to be an extremely difficult question to answer as The Big Roar contains so many highlights that I just couldn’t possibly narrow my choice down to one track. It was like lining up twelve Ferraris and being asked to pick which was my favourite car. It’s the sort of album where every time the next track comes on you think to yourself, ‘Ar, yes! I love this one!”

You’ve probably gathered by now that I absolutely love this album and although I have pretty much played it to death, I suspect this will be an album which I will always periodically come back to.

The good news is that according to The Joy Formidable's facebook page, they've recently been busy finishing their second record (as per their post dated 30th July 2012) and if it turns out to be half as good as The Big Roar then it’ll still be a contender for album of the year.

Album Highlights: The Everchanging Spectrum of A Lie, Austere, A Heavy Abacus, Whirring, Cradle, The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade... (in fact pretty much the entire album).

Download The Big Roar by The Joy Formidable on iTunes:

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