No Joy
More Faithful
MEXICAN SUMMER
7/10
Shoegaze, with all of its sonic layers and unintelligible lyrics, is not exactly in its heyday (Oh, for it to be 1991 again!), but Montreal foursome No Joy is holding the genre’s fuzz-flag high in the air on its third album. The hazy guitar work heard on 2010’s Ghost Blonde and 2013’s Wait to Pleasure has evolved into a feral beast on More Faithful. This ragged and disparate aesthetic is partially due to No Joy’s bringing Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Chairlift) onboard for production and the band recording some of the LP in an old Costa Rican farmhouse, but these changes feel right for No Joy. Jasamine White-Gluz’s soprano vocals effortlessly pierce Laura Lloyd’s impromptu cranked-up waves of distortion on the LP’s eleven tracks. Elbrecht’s production (specifically the vocals being higher in the mix) gives each song a trajectory, especially on “Everything New” and “Burial in Twos.” No Joy has injected just enough ferocious punk and hallucinatory melodicism into More Faithful to leave listeners drenched in sound and wanting more.
