| No Joy — Wait to Pleasure (2013) |
No Joy — Wait to Pleasure
¦ The female-fronted noise poppers are certainly content to mine the depleted fields of shoegaze and twee indie sounds for inspiration, the group creates a maelstrom of melody out of both, with a layered, fuzzy approach that incorporates big, clean riffage, anonymous vocals hiding in the background, and a considerable churn across memorable four-minute pop songs. There’s a great deal more structure in their work than is found in many of their contemporaries, and their contemplative song structures work in favor to this approach. It’s the perennial box of chocolates filled with razor wire, but even the most fastidious of modern music archaeologists won’t see this one coming.
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Album release: April 22 (UK), 23 (US), 2013
Record Label: Kemado/Mexican Summer
Duration: 36:07
Tracks:
01. E ( 5:19)
02. Hare Tarot Lies ( 3:26)
03. Prodigy ( 2:36)
04. Slug Night ( 3:39)
05. Blue Neck Riviera ( 4:22)
06. Lizard Kids ( 2:21)
07. Lunar Phobia ( 3:51)
08. Wrack Attack ( 2:56)
09. Ignored Pets ( 2:43)
10. Pleasure ( 2:05)
11. Uhy Yuoi Yoi ( 2:44)
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Website: http://nojoymusic.com/ / MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/nojoy#!
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nojoymusic
General director: Martin Pike:
Press contact: US: Jess Rotter CAN: Darryl Weeks UK Print Leah Wilson: UK/EU Online Kathryne Chalker:
Agent: US/CAN UK/EU
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW
¦ Montreal shoegazers No Joy started off with sounds as doomy and inconsolable as their band name, spinning tales of detachment and everyday dread over lo-fi treatments, guitar strangulation, and reverb abuse. As dreamy and exciting as the band could be, some details were lost in the fuzz of their 2010 debut, Ghost Blonde. While the follow-up Wait to Pleasure is by no means less obscured by feedback and noisy textures, the songs have a sense of clarity and determination that separates them from the band's earlier work. No Joy often get lumped into the ever-expanding vat of 2010's shoegaze revivalists, and though the influence of pedal-hoppers like Ride, Lush, Jesus and Mary Chain, and the revered My Bloody Valentine are hard to deny, a core of experimental tendencies and strong songwriting set No Joy apart. Diving into the album with the fuzz bass and driving drums of "E," waves of feedback and melodically disconnected vocals build tension as the slow-burning song lumbers up to even fuzzier heights with multiple guitar overdubs finally breaking through like a dam bursting. MBV-styled chord progressions and moody ethereal melodies characterize the pensive "Slug Night" and the tremolo-soaked "Lunar Phobia." These tracks come dangerously close to their inspirations, and would border on embarrassingly derivative if the songwriting weren't so strong. Throughout the album, subtle production touches help push the songs over the top time and again, be it the ghostly echos in the distance on "Pleasure," Cocteau Twins-esque snippets of disembodied vocals, or the constant currents of nearly subliminal guitar parts that glide beneath almost every song. The album is diverse without ever losing focus, shifting from shoegaze meltdowns to the more goth-pop electro of "Blue Neck Riviera" without sounding like the work of two different bands. No Joy succeeds wildly on Wait to Pleasure, referencing enormous influences without really using them as the sole template for their sounds. Along with contemporaries like DIIV, Fear of Men, Echo Lake, and a handful of others, No Joy falls into the camp of bands not just updating a style for the sake of nostalgia or lack of imagination, but actually pushing the boundaries of established great ideas. In their best moments, No Joy not only expand on these ideas, but improve on them.
Label: http://www.mexicansummer.com
Description:
¦ Wait To Pleasure may not provide you with any new answers about No Joy, but what it does offer is a batch of incredible new songs, the product of the Montreal noise-pop band’s first foray in a fully-furnished studio environment. Here the band has flourished, delivering their finest set to date, rooted heavily in shoegaze ripcurls and devastating melody, finishing sentences whispered long ago with depth, variance and force. Jasamine White-Gluz, Laura Lloyd and Garland Hastings knock down the fence between nostalgia and modernity, chaos and control, in a perfectly realized work.
No Joy still sounds like a shoegaze band, but on Wait To Pleasure you can hear what’s happening under the surface, a work that subverts the expectations of where a latter-day approach to that genre might be able to take the listener. “We get a lot of the obvious comparisons,” Laura says about the band’s music, favorably likened to the stormier side of the pond, where bands like Lush and Swervedriver used to reside, as well as the templates for that sound in groups like Hüsker Dü.
¦ Wait To Pleasure found No Joy set loose in Mexican Summer’s studio, Gary’s Electric, for two weeks in 2012, with producer Jorge Elbrecht (Violens, Lansing-Dreiden) at the helm. Adding piano, keyboards and drum programming to the record helped to color in their sound the way that they wanted.
¦ Those of you with well-trained ears can play spot-the-influence, but the record remains well within the precedent set by No Joy’s releases. “Lunar Phobia” finds Jasamine’s ethereal vocal harmonies prismatically split in the studio environment, with syncopated and chopped-up rhythms last heard in Alan Moulder’s work with groups of yore like Curve, a seamless blend of digital tricks and analog guitar crunch. Better to drill into your skull before you realize what’s happening – better to let all of their sometimes-stinging, sometimes-syrupy music into that new hole in your head.
¦ “We play as if the audience isn’t there, and we wouldn’t care if there weren’t anyone in the room at all, other than our band,” Jasamine qualifies. “No matter what, we are making this music for ourselves.” Feel fortunate, then, that we are invited along to listen in, to take what we want out of No Joy’s songs. They’ve gotten everything they wanted already.
On Tour:
4-21 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair (w/ Clinic and The Cobbs)
4-23 Toronto, ON @ The Garrison (w/ Clinic)
4-24 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall (w/ Clinic)
4-25 Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge (w/ Clinic)
4-26 Denton, TX @ Dan’s Silverleaf (w/ Clinic)
4-27 Houston, TX @ Fitzgeralds Downstairs (w/ Clinic)
4-28 Austin, TX @ Austin Psych Fest
4-30 Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom (w/ Clinic)
5-1 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour (w/ Clinic)
5-2 San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop (w/ Clinic)
5-4 Seattle, WA @ Neumos (w/ METZ)
5-6 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge (w/ METZ)
5-7 Denver, CO @ Hi Dive (w/ METZ)
5-9 Grinnell, IA @ Grinnell College Gardner Lounge (w/ METZ)
5-10 Minneapolis, MN @ The Whole Music Club (w/ METZ)
5-11 Madison, WI @ The Frequency (w/ METZ)
5-14 Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
5-15 New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
5-16 Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands
5-17 Montreal, QC, Canada @ The Plant
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW
By Gregory Adams
¦ Last year, we learned that Montreal shoegazers No Joy had scrapped an entire recording session with Raveonettes frontman Sune Rose Wagner to rethink the follow-up to their 2010 self-titled debut. The band have now perfected a platter, knowingly titled Wait to Pleasure. It drops April 23 through Mexican Summer.
¦ As previously reported, the collection was tracked with producer Jorge Elbrecht (Chairlift, Violens) over the course of a couple of weeks at Mexican Summer's studio, Gary's Electric. The recording sessions apparently stray from No Joy's lo-fi early days, adding piano, keyboards and drum programming into the mix. This is the first No Joy record released that finds the band working in a proper, fully furnished studio.
¦ "The new one is a progression because we've developed as a band and we also were less referential in our songwriting," singer-guitarist Jasamine White-Gluz had previously said about the impending song cycle. "It wasn't about having a 'shoegaze' guitar sound on this new one. It was just about songs and having those songs be memorable."
For a taste of what's in store, you can stream new tune "Lunar Phobia" in the player at the bottom of the page.
¦ A tracklisting has not yet been made available, but No Joy did announce some supporting dates for METZ and Clinic this spring. You can check the details, including a lone Canadian stop in Toronto, down below. You can also see the album's artwork up above.
Fortaken: http://exclaim.ca
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Also:
¦ http://nojoy.bandcamp.com/
¦ http://www.villavillanola.com/suoni/june-8-no-joy-casa-del-popolo/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
| No Joy — Wait to Pleasure (2013) |
No Joy — Wait to Pleasure
¦ The female-fronted noise poppers are certainly content to mine the depleted fields of shoegaze and twee indie sounds for inspiration, the group creates a maelstrom of melody out of both, with a layered, fuzzy approach that incorporates big, clean riffage, anonymous vocals hiding in the background, and a considerable churn across memorable four-minute pop songs. There’s a great deal more structure in their work than is found in many of their contemporaries, and their contemplative song structures work in favor to this approach. It’s the perennial box of chocolates filled with razor wire, but even the most fastidious of modern music archaeologists won’t see this one coming.
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Album release: April 22 (UK), 23 (US), 2013
Record Label: Kemado/Mexican Summer
Duration: 36:07
Tracks:
01. E ( 5:19)
02. Hare Tarot Lies ( 3:26)
03. Prodigy ( 2:36)
04. Slug Night ( 3:39)
05. Blue Neck Riviera ( 4:22)
06. Lizard Kids ( 2:21)
07. Lunar Phobia ( 3:51)
08. Wrack Attack ( 2:56)
09. Ignored Pets ( 2:43)
10. Pleasure ( 2:05)
11. Uhy Yuoi Yoi ( 2:44)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Website: http://nojoymusic.com/ / MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/nojoy#!
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nojoymusic
General director: Martin Pike:
Press contact: US: Jess Rotter CAN: Darryl Weeks UK Print Leah Wilson: UK/EU Online Kathryne Chalker:
Agent: US/CAN UK/EU
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW
¦ Montreal shoegazers No Joy started off with sounds as doomy and inconsolable as their band name, spinning tales of detachment and everyday dread over lo-fi treatments, guitar strangulation, and reverb abuse. As dreamy and exciting as the band could be, some details were lost in the fuzz of their 2010 debut, Ghost Blonde. While the follow-up Wait to Pleasure is by no means less obscured by feedback and noisy textures, the songs have a sense of clarity and determination that separates them from the band's earlier work. No Joy often get lumped into the ever-expanding vat of 2010's shoegaze revivalists, and though the influence of pedal-hoppers like Ride, Lush, Jesus and Mary Chain, and the revered My Bloody Valentine are hard to deny, a core of experimental tendencies and strong songwriting set No Joy apart. Diving into the album with the fuzz bass and driving drums of "E," waves of feedback and melodically disconnected vocals build tension as the slow-burning song lumbers up to even fuzzier heights with multiple guitar overdubs finally breaking through like a dam bursting. MBV-styled chord progressions and moody ethereal melodies characterize the pensive "Slug Night" and the tremolo-soaked "Lunar Phobia." These tracks come dangerously close to their inspirations, and would border on embarrassingly derivative if the songwriting weren't so strong. Throughout the album, subtle production touches help push the songs over the top time and again, be it the ghostly echos in the distance on "Pleasure," Cocteau Twins-esque snippets of disembodied vocals, or the constant currents of nearly subliminal guitar parts that glide beneath almost every song. The album is diverse without ever losing focus, shifting from shoegaze meltdowns to the more goth-pop electro of "Blue Neck Riviera" without sounding like the work of two different bands. No Joy succeeds wildly on Wait to Pleasure, referencing enormous influences without really using them as the sole template for their sounds. Along with contemporaries like DIIV, Fear of Men, Echo Lake, and a handful of others, No Joy falls into the camp of bands not just updating a style for the sake of nostalgia or lack of imagination, but actually pushing the boundaries of established great ideas. In their best moments, No Joy not only expand on these ideas, but improve on them.
Label: http://www.mexicansummer.com
Description:
¦ Wait To Pleasure may not provide you with any new answers about No Joy, but what it does offer is a batch of incredible new songs, the product of the Montreal noise-pop band’s first foray in a fully-furnished studio environment. Here the band has flourished, delivering their finest set to date, rooted heavily in shoegaze ripcurls and devastating melody, finishing sentences whispered long ago with depth, variance and force. Jasamine White-Gluz, Laura Lloyd and Garland Hastings knock down the fence between nostalgia and modernity, chaos and control, in a perfectly realized work.
No Joy still sounds like a shoegaze band, but on Wait To Pleasure you can hear what’s happening under the surface, a work that subverts the expectations of where a latter-day approach to that genre might be able to take the listener. “We get a lot of the obvious comparisons,” Laura says about the band’s music, favorably likened to the stormier side of the pond, where bands like Lush and Swervedriver used to reside, as well as the templates for that sound in groups like Hüsker Dü.
¦ Wait To Pleasure found No Joy set loose in Mexican Summer’s studio, Gary’s Electric, for two weeks in 2012, with producer Jorge Elbrecht (Violens, Lansing-Dreiden) at the helm. Adding piano, keyboards and drum programming to the record helped to color in their sound the way that they wanted.
¦ Those of you with well-trained ears can play spot-the-influence, but the record remains well within the precedent set by No Joy’s releases. “Lunar Phobia” finds Jasamine’s ethereal vocal harmonies prismatically split in the studio environment, with syncopated and chopped-up rhythms last heard in Alan Moulder’s work with groups of yore like Curve, a seamless blend of digital tricks and analog guitar crunch. Better to drill into your skull before you realize what’s happening – better to let all of their sometimes-stinging, sometimes-syrupy music into that new hole in your head.
¦ “We play as if the audience isn’t there, and we wouldn’t care if there weren’t anyone in the room at all, other than our band,” Jasamine qualifies. “No matter what, we are making this music for ourselves.” Feel fortunate, then, that we are invited along to listen in, to take what we want out of No Joy’s songs. They’ve gotten everything they wanted already.
On Tour:
4-21 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair (w/ Clinic and The Cobbs)
4-23 Toronto, ON @ The Garrison (w/ Clinic)
4-24 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall (w/ Clinic)
4-25 Nashville, TN @ Mercy Lounge (w/ Clinic)
4-26 Denton, TX @ Dan’s Silverleaf (w/ Clinic)
4-27 Houston, TX @ Fitzgeralds Downstairs (w/ Clinic)
4-28 Austin, TX @ Austin Psych Fest
4-30 Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom (w/ Clinic)
5-1 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour (w/ Clinic)
5-2 San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop (w/ Clinic)
5-4 Seattle, WA @ Neumos (w/ METZ)
5-6 Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge (w/ METZ)
5-7 Denver, CO @ Hi Dive (w/ METZ)
5-9 Grinnell, IA @ Grinnell College Gardner Lounge (w/ METZ)
5-10 Minneapolis, MN @ The Whole Music Club (w/ METZ)
5-11 Madison, WI @ The Frequency (w/ METZ)
5-14 Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
5-15 New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
5-16 Brooklyn, NY @ Glasslands
5-17 Montreal, QC, Canada @ The Plant
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW
By Gregory Adams
¦ Last year, we learned that Montreal shoegazers No Joy had scrapped an entire recording session with Raveonettes frontman Sune Rose Wagner to rethink the follow-up to their 2010 self-titled debut. The band have now perfected a platter, knowingly titled Wait to Pleasure. It drops April 23 through Mexican Summer.
¦ As previously reported, the collection was tracked with producer Jorge Elbrecht (Chairlift, Violens) over the course of a couple of weeks at Mexican Summer's studio, Gary's Electric. The recording sessions apparently stray from No Joy's lo-fi early days, adding piano, keyboards and drum programming into the mix. This is the first No Joy record released that finds the band working in a proper, fully furnished studio.
¦ "The new one is a progression because we've developed as a band and we also were less referential in our songwriting," singer-guitarist Jasamine White-Gluz had previously said about the impending song cycle. "It wasn't about having a 'shoegaze' guitar sound on this new one. It was just about songs and having those songs be memorable."
For a taste of what's in store, you can stream new tune "Lunar Phobia" in the player at the bottom of the page.
¦ A tracklisting has not yet been made available, but No Joy did announce some supporting dates for METZ and Clinic this spring. You can check the details, including a lone Canadian stop in Toronto, down below. You can also see the album's artwork up above.
Fortaken: http://exclaim.ca
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Also:
¦ http://nojoy.bandcamp.com/
¦ http://www.villavillanola.com/suoni/june-8-no-joy-casa-del-popolo/
-------------------------------------------------------------------