No Joy

All Music Guide:

The doomy shoegaze band No Joy began in November 2009, when guitarist/vocalist Jasmine White-Glutz was living in Los Angeles and guitarist/vocalist Laura Lloyd was living in Montreal. The pair wrote songs as long-distance collaborators until White-Glutz moved to Montreal and they could play shows together. One of their first gigs was with Best Coast; when that band’s Bethany Cosentino said that No Joy was “the best band ever” on her Twitter feed, buzz began forming around the band. The band’s moody, interlocking guitars and ethereal vocals allowed them to fit on bills with bands as diverse as Wavves, Harvey Milk, and Besnard Lakes. Meanwhile, Best Coast's label Mexican Summer signed No Joy and issued their self-titled 7", which was produced by Miracle Fortress' Graham Van Pelt in 2010. The band expanded to a four-piece and enlisted the Raveonettes' Sune Rose-Wagner to mix their full-length album, Ghost Blonde, which was released in November 2010. In 2012, a stop-gap EP entitled Negaverse was released while the band worked again with Rose-Wagner on the follow up to their debut. Ultimately, however, the band was unsatisfied with the results and shelved the sessions, opting instead to work with Chairlift member Jorge Elbrecht on what would become their 2013 sophomore release Wait To Pleasure.

Wikipedia:

No Joy are a Canadian shoegazing band formed in late 2009 by Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd.

Biography[edit]

Jasamine was living in Los Angeles while Laura was living in Montreal Via e-mail they started collaborating which eventually led to Jasamine's return to Montreal and their first show with Grant Hart (Hüsker Dü) on 15 December 2009. The band continued to play locally, including a show with up-and-coming indie band Best Coast, where lead singer Bethany Cosentino took a liking to the band and tweeted “Dude, No Joy is the best band ever. Two hot blonde girls just shredding away. Sooooo amazing.”

The band soon after signed to Mexican Summer Records and released their first 7" "No Summer" b/w "No Joy". The release of this 7" brought No Joy to book their own national U.S. tour, bringing along La Sera (a Vivian Girls side project) for a 3 week stint of mostly west coast shows. Around this time, London based label Sexbeat re-released the debut 7" for a UK/European release. No Joy toured later that fall with Mexican Summer labelmates, Dungen.

The 7" sold out quickly, and six months later on 16 November 2010, No Joy released their debut LP, Ghost Blonde to wide critical acclaim; "The guitars, loud enough to obliterate everything within 50 yards, create a balmy atmosphere where lacerating riffs and blurry strumming shares face time with ear-piercing feedback" (Pitchfork Media). The band shares a strong DIY mentality when it comes to producing and recording their music, stating in an interview with The Stool Pigeon: "You can record anything for free now. If you’ve got a laptop or a friend’s laptop, do it yourself," however they left the mixing side of the project up to The Raveonettes' Sune Rose Wagner. On working with Sune, White says "We were recording in our space and it was sounding like shit, so we had the idea of someone helping to clean it up a little bit, but everybody in Montreal was asking for way too much money. And we’ve both always liked the way Raveonettes’ records sound. We exchanged emails a few times and we had exactly the same music tastes, so it just went from there". The final package "convincingly captures the gloriously fuzzy, effects-covered sound of the shoegaze era, but escapes being mere copycats by adding a wonderfully spooky atmosphere and by writing hooky, easy to swallow melodies", a 4.5 star review from AllMusic.

The praise for Ghost Blonde, and their notoriously loud and hypnotizing live act, garnered attention notable publications such as The New York Times, Pitchfork Media, Brooklyn Vegan, and The Guardian amongst others. In early 2011 No Joy released the single "Hawaii" on a UK 7" with a B side consisting of a remix of the song "Indigo Child" done by Stereolab's Tim Gane.

No Joy toured the UK in early 2011 with Florida band Surfer Blood, their first stint overseas, and returned to the UK a month later to start a tour that would bring them across Europe while touching base at Barcelona's San Miguel Primavera Sound. On this tour the band played a London show with Wire. Immediately upon return from their European tour, the band flew to SXSW where they played nine shows showcasing for publications such as Pitchfork Media, The AV Club, Gorilla vs. Bear, and others.

The rest of 2011 saw more North American touring, supporting Vivian Girls, and then a co-headline with Marnie Stern, with whom the band released a split single (No Joy contributing "He Cried", a Shangri-Las cover).

In June 2012 an EP, Negaverse, was released followed by Wait to Pleasure, a full album, in 2013.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).