Would be screwed with the without the internet.
Just like most things in my life nowadays, No Joy is a product of email and social networking. Beginning as a long-distance collaboration between LA-based Jasmine White-Gultz and Montreal-dweller Laura Lloyd, the band weren’t able to play a show for the first months of their existence.
However once White-Glutz was back in Canada it didn’t take long for the rumour machine to find them and after Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino tweeted something about them being the best band ever, No Joy have been the latest outfit to enjoy the blogosphere's full and undivided attention.
Social leg-ups are one thing, but without some seriously strong music or good looks to back it up, then what have you got? It’s not as if the world isn’t drowning in cool, hat-wearing shoegaze/dream pop bands right now, but No Joy are something else entirely. Yeah, the fuzzy guitar and half-heard vocals are all there, but look beneath the tape hiss and reverb, and you’ll find a solid gold backbone of pop song-writing and a heart of pure, Cannibal Corpse-style darkness. It’s as if someone took Blink 182 and crossed them with Sunn 0))) and the Cocteau Twins.
If this genre-hopping makes them hard to write about, then it’s certainly done no harm to No Joy’s appeal. Like their music, the band are essentially formless beings who seem to be able to flit between scenes almost at random. Having already played with the likes of Wavves, The Besnard Lakes and Ducktails, the band are about to play with Flats and Fucked Up, before jumping on a bill that includes Simian Mobile Disco and Field Music at this month’s Primavera Festival. From lo-fi indie pop to big beat dance music, via hardcore, it doesn’t get more diverse than that, right?
No Joy - No Summer by Paul Lilley
No Joy are play Stag and Dagger this week, and The Social next week.You can listen to the new album 'Ghost Blonde' on Spotify.
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