Album Review: No Joy - Wait To Pleasure

It's often too easy to slap the shoegaze label on a band that deals in a wash of noise, an insulated fuzz, a nuance of static and ephemeral feedback that leaves an aural imprint, a zealously loyal following and a slight case of tinnitus. So it also seemed with No Joy – their releases in smaller forms fit all the tropes, and by the time the Montreal trio's debut Ghost Blonde rose from the ether in 2010, it seemed their trajectory had been empirically mapped out.

Wait To Pleasure, the band's sophomore LP, effectively smashes such notions. They still trade in reverb-and-delay laden noise, but have stepped out from behind the curtain of the familiar to offer more chaotic fare. E opens into a squalling morass of chaos before Jasamine White-Gluz's ethereal vocals temper the tempest. It's strange that such a growling beast can show the trio at their most buoyant, but it's clear that the past few years have seen them truly come of age. Hare Tarot Lines wavers, a sun-filtered daydream, before the distortion and itch of mortality crashes down, just as quickly lifting again. The adventurous Blue Neck Riviera wraps drum machine beats and sinister synth into an epileptic twitch, held eerily in check by White-Gluz's heavily distorted vocals. Wrack Attack is '60s pastoral sun with the lurking sense of unease bubbling under the surface.

There are moments that hark back to the golden age of shoegaze that clearly enamour them – Slug Night and Lunar Phobia have been ripped from MBV's DNA. But this isn't a bad thing – they act merely as a reminder that Wait To Pleasure is a monumental step forward.