No Joy was a band founded on the concept of distance. Starting out as a collaboration spanning almost the entire length of North America (co-principal Jasmine White-Glutz briefly took up residence in Los Angeles, while Laura Lloyd remained in Montreal), the duo sent tracks back and forth, and Mexican Summer eventually picked them up after hearing two songs on their MySpace page. Before long, White-Glutz moved back home, the band was praised by the always-enthusiastic Bethany Cosentino (whose tweet referred to No Joy as, "the best band ever"), expanded to a quartet, and recorded their debut album, all in less than a year after forming. Whoever says that long-distance relationships never work out should take Ghost Blonde for a spin.
Distance is an ideal that seeps into the pores of every guitar strum and snare hit on the record. Lloyd and White-Glutz's airy vocals are pushed low into the mix, to the point where their voices resemble conversation from a foggy, half-remembered dream. 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. And this noise becomes just as much of a compositional tool as the actual notes summoned from their six-strings.
Filing Ghost Blonde as shoegaze would be reductive, as the reference base is deeper than most of today's bands who work in that template. Lush, My Bloody Valentine, the Breeders, Sonic Youth, and even traces of Hole can be picked up from No Joy's sometimes-melancholy, sometimes-violent sounds. And while the list of references draws heavily from the 90s, the band displays a very uncommon sense of originality. "You Girls Smoke Cigarettes?" is a bass-driven tune with an addictive slurry chant during the verses and a chorus that explodes with harmony, followed by a destructive climax, breakdown, and bridge, all in just a little over two minutes. "Still" is an 80 MPH push featuring ethereal vocals not even trying to rise above the careening, bleating guitars that ping-pong all over the track. "Indigo Child" and "Pacific Pride" temper the righteous noise of the aforementioned songs. The former is a glacial stride into sadder territory offset by the low rumbling of noise that eventually reaches a crescendo by the end of the track, and the latter tests the band's sense of dynamics and succeeds wildly.
"Distance" can be a pejorative term, as if the fact that certain things can't be held at a close range can feel defeating. But while Ghost Blonde can feel like it's keeping the listener at arm's length, further listens reveal a record full of vibrancy, the kind in which you soon find yourself fully immersed.
