The line up for Truck this year was delectable, that’s as sure as silver. Of those circled on the battered timetable in my back pocket, I was itching to see the Joy Formidable for a shamefully admitted first time. However, come 17:30 on the Sunday I found myself shakily huddled over a hay bale emptying the contents of my stomach, namely the eight liters or so of cider I’d consumed earlier that day. Pussy. Consequently I missed the set, and spent the majority of the evening hearing from others precisely how ‘amazing’ it was.

However, being the professional I am, I refused to let organic scrumpy get the better of me – wiping off my mouth I proceeded to the production area to conduct this interview. My only comfort against the persistent drizzle that day is an ill-fitting cardigan, and as I skulk up toward the trio I’m fully aware that a sodden middle-class refugee possibly isn’t what the band are expecting right now. Ritzy immediately wraps an arm around my trembling frame in an innate mothering fashion, before we all find a quiet and dry spot in a nearby barn.

We light cigarettes against the cold, and ask if the band enjoyed themselves on stage;

Ritzy: Well, there are very few gigs we don’t enjoy I suppose – we’d have to be seriously fucking bad not to enjoy it. Even the chaos of something going wrong is enjoyable in some ways. The ‘barn’ was a good stage…
Matt: I was hoping to play to a few more cows really. The people there were really enjoying it but we’re looking to break into the cattle market…

Shit puns are my business mister. Despite this enthusiasm, I warn them on good authority that the cows a few yards away have ring-worm, an ailment probably not worth contracting for a few extra sales.

Matt: My brother had swine flu recently, but it’s just a flu, get over it!
Rhydian: It’s only a fucking pandemic!
Ritzy: Well if you’ve got a prior breathing problem it’s supposed to be more dangerous isn’t it? I’m asthmatic so I’m slightly more worried…

After apologising for fucking that pig in the first place, assuring them I wouldn’t have bothered had I known the trouble it would cause, I get things back on track…

Best not to get ill, you seem pretty busy at the moment….

Rhydian: Yeah, the timetable’s looking pretty hectic, we’ve got festivals every weekend. A lot of them we haven’t played before too so we’re looking forward to the whole experience.
Ritzy: We haven’t been up in Scotland for a while so that’ll be fun, also Nozstock and one in Cardiff – Welsh crowds are always good to us, although I think a lot of them don’t actually know we’re from Wales.

You hide the accent very well…

Ritzy: [mock Welsh accent] Why thank-you! We’ve kind of picked up this scouse/manchunian cross-breed accent from being on the roads so long…

Are you finding enough time to work on new material, what with such a demanding schedule?

Ritzy: We do find time to fit it in…
Matt: That’s the difficulty at the moment, finding the time to fit it in. We’re still finishing writing the album and we have a tour after the summer festivals, but we record everything back home anyway so it’s always documented.

It’s good that you find the time to let it grow organically; even if you set aside the time to record it’s already slightly contrived because you’re working to a structured frame…

Ritzy: It’s funny because we always said, ‘yeah, we’ve got the summer to get it down and record’, but with all the traveling and everything it’s surprising how quickly that time goes.
Rhydian: There’s always a guitar in the van though for when we get a bit of downtime, but like you say sometimes when you set time aside you feel like ‘I have to come up with something now.’

Have you given any thought as to who you’ll be running the album through? I’d imagine you’ve already had some interest…

Ritzy: To be totally honest we haven’t given it much thought. The thing for us is we just want to write it and be happy with it or even just to finish it! I can see us saying ‘right, we’re going to write the album’, and then writing another track and another track and thinking, ‘oh shit, when’s this actually going to come together?!’ and when are we going to say, ‘right, that’s it!’

Do you get a chance to enjoy the festivals you’re at? I saw you watching Pulled Apart earlier, is that a bit of a rarity?

Rhydian: It is a bit, yeah!
Ritzy: I think we’re a bit different now from some other bands ’cause we’ll go into production and say ‘can we swap this for a weekend camping pass’ and they’ll look at us like we’re mad and say, ‘what, you actually want to stay?!’ But it’s getting to that stage where we’re doing two [festivals] a weekend, so we’re having to choose more where to stick around.
Matt: We do stay when we can but it’s becoming less and less possible.
Ritzy: That’s the one thing I really don’t like about festivals; when you come to play and then just fuck off. I definitely like to get a feel for where we are, get a sense of what it is you’re actually doing.
Matt: We came down from Wales yesterday, but we’ll definitely stick around tonight.

Any shameless promotion, while you have the chance?

Ritzy: Actually, yeah! We’re playing at The Garage in September [30th]. I think it has been refurbished so we’re looking forward to that. It’ll be pretty special as we’re looking at doing a live record from that set – it’s a bit under-wraps at the moment but i’m happy for you to announce it. We’ll be playing a few new songs and then doing a download off the back of that…

It’s good that you can capture both sides of the band because you operate well on two levels; your studio recordings and live sets are very much separate entities so it’s nice you can incorporate the two…

Matt: Yeah, plus I don’t think you tend to get a lot of live albums anymore, at least from modern bands…
Ritzy: Like you said it probably makes more sense for us to do it because the two do cross over, they do have a slight twist…
Rhydian: …we don’t just play the record!
Ritzy: Exactly! So it did feel natural to do, plus our fanbase has sort of been nicely nagging at us, not that we succumb to peer pressure, but they’re like, ‘where’s our 8 minute version of Whirring?!’, so now we’re like, ‘well, there you go, it sounds like THAT!’

The opening notes of Supergrass’ set on the main stage begin to resonate around our words at this point, so there’s a unified decision to go and catch a glimpse. I peel off to grab a cup of tea and a woolly jumper, with Mark Corrigan’s words from the week’s Peepshow episode resounding prominently in my mind; ‘She must never know what a pathetic man I am’.

The Joy Formidable