“Remember Nothing.”
The Montreal-based band No Joy, on the contrary, brings us several things to be joyful about: talented female musicians (Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd on guitar and vocals) and shoegaze indie rock and Canadian roots. Of course, the ladies aren’t the only ones in the band. Their male counterparts are Michael Farsky on bass and Garland Hastings on drums, and we now have the band’s third full-length to listen to, More Faithful.
In comparison to 2010’s Ghost Blonde and 2013’s Wait To Pleasure, More Faithful is uptempo. It’s a surf-rock summer soundtrack with an off, dark undertone. Perhaps it’s the massive amount of bass competing for attention against the guitars and the lulling, soft vocals, particularly lulling in “Moon in my Mouth,” a spacey, stripped-down track where the vocals have little to compete against.
There is far more competition in “Corpo Daemon,” where all forces, including heaving drumming, come out. And sometimes, vocals are clear and concise, like in “Rude Films” (which might have the most fuzzed out guitar riff on the album). And other times, lyrics aren’t meant to be clear, like in “Chalk Snake” when vocals echo and overlap. No Joy sends us off with “Judith,” a full-body, full-sounding track encompassing all of the band’s traits, giving any other up-and-coming shoegaze band a run for their money.
It’s a safe bet to say No Joy is at the top of that up-and-coming list. More Faithful is versatile; dreamy, grungy, surf-y, soft, sad, crazy. You can plug this baby into the auxiliary outlet in your car and cruise up the coast, or you can listen to it on repeat while you’re on a bunch of drugs. Win-win situation.
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