Sometimes when a new act blows you away at the South by Southwest Music Conference, it can be something of a letdown seeing them back home. Either there will be a disappointing turnout, or the band members play here with half the enthusiasm, or you realize you might've simply been caught up in the moment in Austin.
None of those things happened with the Joy Formidable last night. Making its Minnesota debut, the purr-to-roar Welsh trio sold out 7th Street Entry and played with as much fire as the first time I saw them (and the sell-out might've even sparked them a little more). It was one of the most impressive Entry entries of late -- albeit a short one. This was also a rare case where the standard 45-minute set at SXSW didn't wind up being all that abbreviated from any other show on the road. When a band finishes as strongly as the Joy Formidable did with "Whirring," though, nobody expects them to go on.
Like several of the songs, "Whirring" started out as a catchy, sweet, Belly-like fuzz-pop ditty and turned into a long, rumbling, tidal-wavy rocker. The band members finished off the set by throwing around their instruments like another bursting trio, Nirvana, and for a change you couldn't call it a cliched move. Earlier in the show, the group also played several Nirvana/Foo-like riff stormers, including "The Magnifying Glass," in which frontwoman Ritzy Bryan even looked a little Kurt Cobain-like as she shredded under her stringy bleach-blonde hair. Other songs had more of a, um, whirring roar à la My Bloody Valentine. In the heartthrobby rocker "I Don't Want to See You Like This," I wondered if drummer Matt Thomas isn't actually the real leader of the band. It seemed sort of ironic that bassist Rhydian Dafydd often sang high harmony to Ritzy's vocals, an interesting flip on the Frank Black/Kim Deal formula. The Joy Formidable at once proved to be very unformulaic but also refreshingly familiar and straight-ahead.
By show's end, I sort of wondered why I still even bother going to SXSW if most of the bands are going to come here anyway -- and bring their A+ game when they do.
