When she leans in close to the mic to emphasize a particular phrase, her eyes go so wide you can see the whites all the way around; it's as though a thousand people just said something she didn't quite hear and she's trying to address them all at once. And several measures later, there she still is, holding in the audience with her wide-eyed intensity, furiously mashing at her guitar. Her name is Ritzy Bryan.
As lead singer of The Joy Formidable, Bryan puts this command of attention to use keeping the audience with her during songs that can become protracted and dizzying walls of cymbal crashes and guitar hammering. The Welsh-bred three-piece only got about twenty minutes at the NPR showcase, so maybe they had everything turned up to 11 to squeeze in a maximum of substance in minimal time, but the result for me gave a surfeit of sound and fury but fell short on the significance.
