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No Joy at the Bottom of the Hill

Ned Raggett Jun 10, 2015 17:00 PM

Depending on the metric you use, we're in something like the third — or maybe even fourth — wave of shoegaze, even if that's as slippery a term as anything out there. No Joy definitely has its place in all that, but its take on the form is the kind that embraces open hooks and reverbed haze in equal measure. Guitarists and lead figures Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd put some actual woozy scuzz in their arrangements, while White-Gluz's vocals sweep in layers, and drummer Garland Hastings can let himself go in the kind of quick, frenetic rush that showed how much of the original shoegaze groups loved their Sonic Youth records as much as anything else. The band's new album More Faithful has killer songs like "Chalk Snake" and "Corpo Daemon" which promise to be even more of a blast to listen to live.