Hitch

Fire still comes easy to the Joy Formidable, but Hitch is the first time they've seemed at a loss for how to use it.

Whatever the magic formula is for capturing the sound and feel of live performance on a studio album, it’s hard to imagine that prolonged, methodical preparation is the way to find it. That was The Joy Formidable’s intent in taking a year to hang in its native Wales to write and record its third full-length, Hitch,…

If the songwriting on ‘Hitch’ is, to coin an old music hack turn-of-phrase, ‘mature’, it’s also concise - in a good way.

The Joy Formidable continue on their single-minded path toward sheer scale, this time around taking things a little more slowly in the studio. In fact, the band started by building a studio, The Red Brick, in their native Wales, then spent 12 months recor