Out of all the records coming out this year, the new No Joy, More Faithful, is my most anticipated.
Their previous album Wait To Pleasure is about as flawless as seeing Tom Hardy kiss his pitbull, and I have been listening to it non-stop since it was released. On each listen I find it just as brilliant, intense and magical as when I first laid ears on it. It’s the audio equivalent of being in the midst of a perfect acid trip, tracers and all; the sounds swirl and dissipate, then come crashing back into a whirlwind of ethereal harmonies and distortion. Obviously, More Faithful has some big shoes to fill.
If Wait To Pleasure is the audio equivalent of a hallucinogenic peak, More Faithful is the hazy next morning where you’re still feeling the residuals and just want a coffee, your sunglasses, and a cool breeze. It’s slightly colder in tone and places a lot of emphasis on sharper and more intricate guitar work. The rhythm section brings that same element of unpredictability found on Wait To Pleasure, and of course all of this intertwines through a swarm of dreamy, complex vocal melodies that seem to waver in and out of existence while stimulating all the dopamine receptors in your brain.
No Joy once again shows us an array of tempos on More Faithful, ranging from upbeat rockers like the rickety, shape-shifting “Remember Nothing” and the hummable pummelings of “Corpo Daemon” and “Hollywood Teeth,” to more mellow and opiating tracks, including the album single “Moon in my Mouth,” and the swooning, trance inducing “Everything New,” where the instruments melt together like ectoplasmic clockwork and boot straight into your brain. The majority of the songs on here swiftly shift in structure and are riddled with plot twists that often sprawl out into heavier, blissful, fuzzed out dreamscapes anchored to reality by rigorous bass and drums work. “Burial in Twos” begins like a serene lullaby before shaking you like a British nanny; “Bolas” and “I am an Eye Machine” are more stripped down slow burners that end in flames.
No Joy has proven once again to be a dynamic and audacious rock band that has created their own unique and highly addicting sound and style that I hope all the kids get hooked on. More Faithful is a formidable album among the new releases of 2015, and I can’t wait to see them play it live in Boston at the end of the month.
Rating: 5.75 out of 6 Doves Prince’s Minnetonka Tea Time was interrupted when he overheard No Joy’s More Faithful and thought for a split second that it may almost be as good as one of his own. After splashing his cup of tea into his ankle masseuse’s face, he went downstairs into his studio and wrote the best mind-melting neo-funk-jazz-fusion box set known to man.
Interview with No Joy’s bassist Michael Farsky
Tell us about the formation of No Joy.Jasamine (White-Gluz vocals, guitar) & Laura (Lloyd guitar) decided to start No Joy in 2009 after their previous band blew-up from the inside-out.
They met Garland (Hastings drums) soon after and invited him to join the band, the beginning of a wonderful friendship.
What are the themes and influences on More Faithful?
The album digs into how we’ve all been driven to be a little crazy & desperate in the last few years, how we relate to our lives being displaced between missing out on a regular life & not understanding what happens around us. It’s been a strange half-life existence that’s both good and bad.
Touring and being a little impatient with music definitely influenced the songwriting on the album to be busier and more complex. Overall we never wanted any moment on the album to be too bland or too boring or too easy to play or too easy to predict.
What have you all been listening to lately?
Constant back-and-forth between Top 40, screamo, techno, and free jazz.
What’s it like being my favorite band? Have you felt it yet?
Probably feels pretty similar to you being our favourite guy in Rhode Island. We’re very glad you like us cause maybe it means we can stay at your house again.
How is the music scene in Montreal these days? You guys dig Solids?
Music is Montreal is all-good lately. Still dozens of local bands playing shows every night. Sometimes a cool things catches on and bands & friends push each other to work hard on songs and support each other’s shows.
Lot of really fun bizarre-freaky-rock stuff lately that I like, bands like Un Blonde, Each Other, Telstar Drugs.
Solids are great, their shows are always fun and their songs are really cool. Also very loud for a two-piece. Xavier used to play in The Expectorated Sequence who were my favourite band when I first moved to Montreal.
You guys have been touring like crazy the past few years, any good tour stories? What have been your favorite cities?
I liked touring through the Balkans and Eastern Europe cause the shows were so different from what we’re used to seeing. Skopje was cool, really bizarre to walk around surrounded by a thousand brand new 100-foot tall pewter statues and then play a show in the lobby of a movie theatre.
In the Bone Thugs-N-Harmony video for “Crossroads”, Uncle Charles may have died from popping the same pills that the girls in your video for “Hare Tarot Lies” were doing. What are these designer drugs, and can somebody, anybody, tell me why?
Totally man, you got it.
Will there be any music videos made for the tracks on More Faithful?
Yeah, vid for “Everything New” directed by our bud Jason Harvey already came out, I think it’s great.
Maybe some more ideas in the works, each of them very different from each other.
What does No Joy have coming up in the near future?
We’ll be playing shows through the rest of the year and see if anyone wants to see us again after that.
Have you heard the new Krysstal Staarr?
Vero got bit on the finger by a squirrel the day of our show in Montreal! She was really worried she might have rabies and her knuckle was swelling up, but she still bartended the entire night and went to the emergency room at 2am. She is my favourite bartender worldwide.