No Joy
Jasamine White-Gluz's Montreal shoegaze band, whose Wait to Pleasure (2013) holds "Hare Tarot Lies" and whose More Faithful (2015) holds "Hollywood Teeth".
Montreal
No Joy is a Canadian band formed in Montreal in late 2009 by Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd, after their previous band blew up from the inside out, as White-Gluz put it in a 2015 interview. Its first show was on December 15, 2009, opening for Grant Hart of Husker Du. White-Gluz had freelanced for Exclaim! before the band formed. They signed to Mexican Summer in 2010, issued the 7-inch "No Summer", and toured with La Sera and Dungen. The debut LP, Ghost Blonde, came out on November 16, 2010, mixed by Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes. In 2011 they toured the UK with Surfer Blood, played Primavera Sound and nine SXSW showcases, and shared a split 7-inch with Marnie Stern covering the Shangri-Las' "He Cried".
In 2012 they began working with the producer Jorge Elbrecht, who made Wait to Pleasure (April 23, 2013) and More Faithful (June 9, 2015). More followed: the EPs Negaverse (2012), Pastel and Pass Out (2013), Drool Sucker (2016), Creep (2017) and a 2018 EP with Peter Kember (Sonic Boom). A 2020 press release presented No Joy as White-Gluz's solo project, and Motherhood came out in July 2020 (Wikipedia says August). Bugland arrived on August 8, 2025, made with Fire-Toolz as a full collaborator, and drew Pitchfork's Best New Music at 8.3 and a place on the 2026 Polaris Prize longlist.
Two albums
Wait to Pleasure (Mexican Summer, 36:02, produced by No Joy and Elbrecht, mastered by Joe Lambert, artwork by Shaun Durkan) was the first time in a proper studio, after a thin-walled rehearsal space; they layered heavily and then cut, with bongos, a piccolo snare and a chorus pedal, and recorded pita bread thrown at a wall into a feedback track. Metacritic scored it 76, with Pitchfork, PopMatters and Exclaim! at 8 out of 10 and NME at 6; The Line of Best Fit's Joe Goggins called it an uneven listen at times, but a promising one all the same.
More Faithful (Mexican Summer, 36:25) was produced by Elbrecht and recorded between Gary's Electric in Brooklyn and an old farmhouse in Costa Rica. Paste's Eric Swedlund gave it 7.0, writing that the band always maintains control over those sonic transformations, and Flood's Kyle Lemmon 7 out of 10, calling it ferocious punk and hallucinatory melodicism. A tour in June 2015 ran from Montreal to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Setlist.fm has 166 setlists, with sets in 2025 and 2026 centered on Bugland and Motherhood.
Albums
- Wait to Pleasure 2013 · Mexican Summer
Their second album: eleven tracks, the first made in a proper studio.
- More Faithful 2015 · Mexican Summer
Their third album: eleven tracks, recorded between Brooklyn and Costa Rica.
- Creep 2017 · ep · Grey Market
The second in the run of EPs that replaced the album cycle, four tracks produced by Jorge Elbrecht and the first release on Grey Market.
Songs
- Hare Tarot Lies Wait to Pleasure · 2013
The second track of Wait to Pleasure and its second single, in April 2013.
- Hollywood Teeth More Faithful · 2015
The third track of More Faithful, a two-minute blur of guitar effects released as a digital single in 2015.
- Califone Creep · 2017
The opener and first single from Creep, with a collage video by Ben Clarkson that NPR premiered in January 2017.
Sources
- No Joy, Wikipedia
- Wait to Pleasure, Wikipedia
- An interview with No Joy, First Revival
- No Joy interview and review of More Faithful, Bearded Gentlemen (2015-06-19)
- Ladies and gentlemen, No Joy's "Califone" is floating in space, NPR (2017-01-24)
- No Joy, "Califone" video, CLRVYNT (2017-01-24)
- No Joy: Creep EP, Exclaim!
- Creep, release group, MusicBrainz
- No Joy, Creep EP (Grey Market, 2017), Somewhere Cold (2017-03-04)
- No Joy, Creep, Slug