A Tune-Yards side project? No, but this Ethiopian-American crew's update on Seventies East African funk sounds just as giddily strange. Guitar solos, massed vocals,violin and brass rush in like a Red Bulled marching band. Dance at your own risk.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”