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 Welsh trio's third spin under the stylus, Hitch finds the Joy Formidable turning inward, but keeping the speaker cabinets aimed squarely toward the nosebleed section.

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