No Joy Had a Spirited Re-Awakening While Recording Their New Album

Photo By Rebecca Storm

No Joy is haunted. Over the phone in Montreal, No Joy’s lead singer Jasamine White-Gluz tells a story about their recording session in Costa Rica for the band’s newest album release, More Faithful via Mexican Summer/Arts & Crafts. She talks about the one time the band asked a housekeeper/orchid tender named Rosa if she wanted to appear on a song. Not fluent in Spanish, but via the often unpredictable Google translate, the band managed to convince Rosa to sing and whistle on the song “Bolas.” Admittedly, she says the band didn’t know what was sung until producer Jorge Elbrecht pointed it out. “I guess she didn’t like me in particular because she was singing about ghosts in my room and they were going to kill me.”

In 2009, the Montreal shoegaze band came to be when White-Gluz (who was living in Los Angeles at the time) and lead guitarist Laura Lloyd started sending each other emails of songs and riff snippets. Since then, the DIY band has evolved from a plug-in and play band to one with “more samplers, inner ear monitors, and all these crazy tech things that are intended to make the performance a bit stronger” says White-Gluz. Their sound is enthralling; a wall of noise created with layering makes them particularly hypnotic to listen to with their third effort More Faithful being their strictest—in terms of sound—release to date. Whereas their sophomore record, Wait to Pleasure was an exercise in experimentation, the new record emphasizes a more rigorous practice schedule. With more time on their side this time around, the goal, White-Gluz says, was to make everything as hard and uncomfortable on themselves as possible, especially in the songwriting. If anything came to them easily, then it wasn’t good enough. The process was emotionally and physically trying at times but something they would undoubtedly do again to stave off any kind of dustiness or boredom in future work. Through what she calls hybrid, according to White-Gluz a number of the songs on the album had been pieced together with old and new material—whether that was revisiting samples of tracks buried deep in GarageBand or old files from their past releases simply floating around on her computer. “There are quite a few songs that are bits and pieces of stuff from Ghost Blonde; 2010-era that we mixed with new song ideas so they got sort of a second life as another song,” says White-Gluz.

Noisey: With your second record, Wait to Pleasure, there was a bit of a struggle getting the material out. How did it differ this time around?
Jasamine White-Gluz: This time we knew what to expect a little bit. I don’t want to say we were like athletes but we practiced a lot. We made sure that we had more songs than we needed; we made sure we had everything ready before we went into the studio; we did a lot of pre-production, making sure we knew the ins-and-outs, so by the time we got into the studio, we kind of knew. The goal was to challenge ourselves in the songwriting and so, because we were starting to do things that weren’t in our wheelhouse, we wanted to be able to do them well.

What was it like working and recording in Costa Rica for this record?
Most of the main vocals were done in Brooklyn in the nice studio but a lot of the overdubs and harmonies were done in Costa Rica. We did them at [producer] Jorge’s great-grandparents’ farmhouse on a mountain in the jungle with nobody around. We didn’t bring a huge studio with us—we kind of just made something. Some of the vocals on the record we did in Costa Rica I did in the bathroom. The floor was like grass—it was a beautiful old two-century-old building. It was borderline camping.

Were you influenced by your surroundings at all?
The influence was more that we were really isolated. There was really nothing. We had to drive an hour to the main city so we were really in the middle of the nowhere. It was also rainy season so the only really nice hours of the day were between 6 AM and noon. So between then we’d go walk on the mountain. Between noon and the rest of the day it was torrential rain—we had nothing to do but work on the record. We went maybe a little stir crazy because we were together all the time, always working on this record with nowhere else to go.

I read one part of the press release for this album really quickly and misread really hooky as “really spooky” but thought it fit. Maybe I’m reaching with this but you kind of sound like a siren on it and it all felt haunted in scope.?
It’s hard to look at what we do and see it differently. I like hearing how other people interpret it. For me a lot of the songs on the record I was like “I’m going to pretend to be Sophie B. Hawkins, from the 80s” and was thinking more pop songs, not like the songs are pop at all. A lot of the performances required more belting. On the last record we did a lot of the vocals in the dark with red wine in the middle of the night. This time it was more in the afternoon, [we did] some more vocal warm-ups and tricks, so it was a different climate. I wasn’t leaning to or trying to be spooky. It can definitely be interpreted that way, for sure.

Photo By Allison Staton

I find your music very mysterious, especially in having read that you’re incredibly protective over your lyrics and making sure they sound unclear in the music. I’m wondering what that means for you in terms of songwriting and performing?
With the other records it was really, really intentional to have it open to interpretation. I liked songs I could make out my own version of what was going on and hear what I wanted to hear. I felt like I wanted to keep something personal. When you make music that's open to interpretation you're also open to the criticism and I wanted to keep some things for me to know. Just keep a little part of everything for myself.

We definitely spent more time with the lyrics and they are not always hidden. The subject matter was a little bit more cohesive and personal. Before, I would never share with the rest of the band the lyrics—they would just hear them when we’re recording and be like, “Are you saying that?” “I dunno—maybe!” But this time it was, “Okay guys, everybody read this and tell me if it’s really awful and sorry you have to know exactly what’s going on with me right now.” It was definitely a process of having the lyrics be a major part of the song and if they are heard then it’s okay.

Is that clarity and audibility in the lyrics another level of intimacy between you and your audience?
Yeah, and it definitely also plays in that being uncomfortable thing. I felt like, “What would make me the most uncomfortable, oh, having to share these with people people who listen.” It was another level of opening up and challenging myself on a lyrical level too.

Would you approach songwriting that way in the future?
I think I would do it again. It’s still the thing that makes me the most uncomfortable out of everything. You kind of have to grow up sometimes and deal with it—you can’t be mysterious forever.

Sarah MacDonald is a writer living in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter — @sarahmacdonald