It’s fitting that so much talk about shoegaze plays up security-- the sound is womblike, it blankets you, places you in a waking dream and so forth. And it’s as welcoming to musicians as it is to listeners, as volume, reverb and distortion can be used to minimize mistakes while bands that stay within the established boundaries are often rewarded by its intense loyalists. Case in point, No Joy; if you like shoegaze, you liked No Joy’s 2010 debut Ghost Blonde, as it was a solid, satisfying entry into the genre that didn’t take many chances. But it was hard to feel invested in the Montreal group. As anyone who owns more than one Asobi Seksu, Brother Kite or A Place to Bury Stangers record can tell you, bands who successfully learned how to synthesize fuzz and pop fizz from Loveless or Psychocandy keel over fast once the training wheels come off. Last year’s Negaverse EP did at least acknowledge a need for a new direction, even if it ventured further into murk. However, the clarity and concision of Wait to Pleasure throws everything into reverse, and while their second LP puts No Joy in a position to make mistakes, with risk comes reward, and they also show far more growth and confidence than they previously had to this point.
The easiest way to understand the difference between Wait to Pleasure and its predecessor is to think about the tactile difference between heat and humidity. Whereas the latter was sticky, immersive and overwhelming, Wait to Pleasure offers 11 distinct, tactile sensations that are often diametrically opposed yet placed consecutively; opener “E” slowly boils over after five minutes of glam rock stomp, while the slo-mo pop of “Hare Tarot Lies” calmly lazes in unseasonal warmth. The breakneck pace of “Lizard Kids” leaves the scent of burnt rubber on desert highway after the white hot sensuality of “Blue Neck Riviera”’s dirty electroclash. “Ignored Pets” sizzles, “Pleasure” soothes. It’s a cohesion based on interaction rather than similarity, maintaining a flow that displays No Joy’s subtly expansive range and adds a cumulative, positive effect to already strong individual components.
It’s all the more impressive that they’re able to do so while maintaining the raw elements of Ghost Blonde. While adept at diaphanous cooing, Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd*’*s vocals take on far more of a lead role with piercing, major-key hooks. The guitars are still singed by redlining distortion, but within the context of Wait to Pleasure’s sweeter production, they tend to caramelize rather than corrode. And between “Lizard Kids” and “Ignored Pets”, they’ve established a stylistic template that distinguishes a No Joy song from those of their peers-- combining the pummeling, barely contained pace of a punk rhythm section with shoegaze’s distended high end, rushing through a light net of harmonized vocals that are reverbed to the point of being mere phonetics.
It can be tough to make out the intentionally wordless lyrics from the expressive ones, so the incorporation of synthetic elements tends to bring out their humanity. “Lunar Phobia” follows a continuum of bands whose names served as adjectives for their own sound (Lush, Curve), beat-driven without crossing over to dance music, and tricked out with a wealth of intriguing effects and layers: bird call vocal samples placed against wafting harmonies, juddering kick drums swapping with backmasked snares, tremolo guitars and raw feedback. “Blue Neck Riviera” goes even further into rhythmic clangor, the blackened, deadpan vocals and clacking drum machines recasting Ladytron as lo-fi nightcrawlers before it revisits the Negaverse album cover, taking off toward the rainbow horizon in its second half.
While improving on the sheer sound of Ghost Blonde on nearly every level, No Joy are still more suggestive than declarative. Allusive titles such as “Night Slug”, “Blue Neck Riviera”, and “Wrack Attack” come off as evidence of an inherent playfulness as well as a wide range of interests, even if No Joy’s lyrics are too deep in the mix to tell if they actually do refer in any way to the techno label, Florida’s Emerald Coast, or "Saved By the Bell". A certain kind of impersonality might seem like a cost of doing business in this genre, but within the context of Wait to Pleasure, there’s compensation in hearing No Joy express themselves as a band rather than as people. If you like shoegaze, you’ll probably still like No Joy, but *Wait to Pleasure’*s triumph is making it far less of a requirement.
