Appropriately coming from the Mexican Summer label is the debut LP from NO JOY. These girls started with a 7″ from the same label, and this collection of songs is a great continuation from where they left off.
The girls of No Joy are currently on tour with Wavves and Best Coast, covering both parts of Canada and the United States before jumping across the pond to tour the UK. In the UK they’ll be joined on stage by Surfer Blood and Young Prisms. Whether you’re from the UK or North America, the line up for the night proves not to disappoint with names like those.
After listening to “Ghost Blonde”, it leaves a few questions to be answered. The one that is most prominent in my mind is their live show. With sounds like these, No Joy prove to be quite a contender in a live setting, with song after song leaving you in no other position than right on your ass on the cold hard ground. One track that goes a long way to reinforce that statement is the propulsive “Hawaii”. Set up by the fiery ending of “Pacific Pride”, the first two minutes come across as dazzling as possible, leaving you in a state of awe as they straight up rock out with no other concern in mind. Your eyebrows should have already been cleanly seared off your face by the time you realize how heavy this track was, because the remaining two minutes are the complete opposite of the first two.
As you go deeper into this record, you’ll begin to notice that each song has it’s own catchy guitar hook, smothered in endless layers of crunchy, dreamy reverb that sounds as if it’s bouncing off the walls of a small room before reverberating back into your ears. Spanning from “Mediumship” to “Heedless” to “Pacific Pride”, you’ll eventually figure that out on your own. There’s a slight psychedelic tinge that adds to the mysterious qualities of these songs, which can definitely help keep your attention as you listen from track to track. The cooing female vocals sound distant and angelic, almost like they’re singing from way up in the clouds as you get lost in the perpetual heavenly bliss.
One fantastic track to definitely get lost in is the album closer and title track “Ghost Blonde”. It’s a six minute scorcher and a wonderful way to exit the album, and strangely enough it manages to keep a firm grasp on your attention for the full six minutes. Considering it’s the closing track, you don’t always know what to expect at the end point of an album, but No Joy wrap it up perfectly and quite beautifully this time around. Don’t miss out on these songs below, and as always we’ll see you again bright and early tomorrow morning. Give these deep cuts a respectable chance to sink in before you dismiss them, because they tend to grow on you pretty slowly.
Heedless –
Hawaii –
Ghost Blonde –
My Rating: 8/10
Genre/ Tags: Dream Pop, Post-Punk, Ethereal, Lo-Fi
Ghost Blonde: Tracklist:
1.) Mediumship
2.) Heedless
3.) Maggie Says I Love You
4.) You Girls Smoke Cigarettes?
5.) Pacific Pride
6.) Hawaii
7.) Indigo Child
8.) Still
9.) Untitled
10.) Ghost Blonde
BUY the LP directly from Insound – limited to 2000 !
No Joy on Bandcamp
No Joy – No Summer 7″ previously posted on the Drone
Styrofoam Drone 