Reading 2012: The Joy Formidable, NME/Radio 1 Stage

The first thing that hits you as Joy Formidable launch into their opening song, ‘The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade’, is the volume - it’s proper loud in the NME tent. Lead singer Ritzy Bryan may look like your favourite slightly cooky primary school teacher but she’s determined to give main stage headliner Dave Grohl a run for his money in terms of sustained guitar abuse.

The fact is that Ritzy is Joy formidable’s not so secret weapon and as she whirrs around the stage like a dervish she makes a pretty compelling front woman. When she steals a kiss from bass player Ryhdian during the intro to ‘Cradle’ the only thing louder than the pounding drums is the sound of a thousand hearts breaking slightly in the audience.

This is the band’s only UK festival date, having spent the past few months locked in a log cabin writing second album proper ‘Wolf’s Law’. Appropriately enough, the acoustic ‘Silent Treatment’ has a touch of Bon Iver about it, although it is perhaps somewhat ironic that the majority of the crowd talked all the way through it.

Normal service, and volume, is resumed with set closer ‘Whirring’ and as Ritzy coaxes all manners of My Bloody Valentine noises from her guitar, you could suggest that if this was 1993, post ‘Nevermind’ and ‘Siamese Dream’, the Joy Formidable would be one of the biggest bands out there. As it stands, they’ll just have to settle for being one of best.