The Witching Hours Presents
NO JOY
with DONZII, LAUREN LAKIS, + DJ TALEEN KALI
Since first arriving on the scene in 2009 with blistering inversions of shoegaze, Montreal’s No Joy has always found formidable ways to reinvent itself. Now solely composed of musician Jasamine White-Gluz, No Joy has evolved over the course of four studio albums and five EPs, defying expectation and genre, and cementing itself as something rare: a band without a category.
For No Joy’s first full length in five years, White-Gluz took what she learned from synthesis, reincorporated guitars, and produced an album that is not a departure from No Joy’s early shoegaze, but a stylistically omnivorous expansion that ekes into trip hop, trance and nu-metal. Motherhood is the culmination of years composing outside of her comfort zone, and a return to DIY recording with a leveled-up expertise in production. Touring with genre-divergent artists has honed the band’s comfortably multifarious sound; No Joy picked up post-hardcore fans on the road with Quicksand, and ambient techno fans on gigs with Baths. “As long as people are open minded about music, they can hear different things,” explains White-Gluz, “Maybe because there are a lot of layers.”
Once again pulling sonic inspirations from every corner the band had mastered before, Motherhood is a staggering and melancholic tapestry of fuzzy, 90s/early 2000s nu metal and trip hop, faithful shoegaze, and bold lyricism-- with blunt meditations on femininity, fertility and mortality--all while maintaining a sense of humor.