An interview with No Joy

Jasamine White-Gluz shares about her new album, choosing the countryside over the big city, wearing tarantulas, finding her place in the shoegaze revival, and being a hero to 100 or so lobsters.

Full disclosure: I used to edit Jasamine White-Gluz’s reviews when she was a freelance writer for Exclaim!. This was 15 to 20 years ago, when I was an associate editor at the magazine and a few years before the formation of No Joy, her long-running shoegaze project she started in 2009. On top of that, I actually interviewed Jasamine for Exclaim!, covering both No Joy’s debut album, Ghost Blonde, and its follow-up, Wait for Pleasure, when the Montreal band were one of just a few shoegazers breathing life into the genre.

No Joy have continued to evolve and steadily release music over the years for labels such as Mexican Summer, Topshelf and Joyful Noise, including a collaborative eponymous EP in 2018 with space rock/drone music legend Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kemper). Now signed to Sonic Cathedral in Europe/UK and Hand Drawn Dracula everywhere else, Jasamine has readied her fifth No Joy full-length, Bugland.

While the easier thing to do would be for No Joy to join the current shoegaze renaissance and turn in something closer to the band’s earlier recordings, Jasamine chose to continue her musical journey of trying something new. Bugland sees her teaming up with Chicago’s Fire-Toolz (aka Angel Marcloid), a genre-bending producer who offered just the unpredictable and innovative perspective Jasamine was searching for. Together they took inspiration from the creepy crawlers inhabiting the rural surroundings of Jasamine’s home in Hudson, Quebec and created one of the most audacious shoegaze albums of the year.

I wanted to start off by talking about bugs. Where did that interest come from? Do you fancy yourself an entomologist? 

No, not at all. It was from being around them. Where I live is full of nature and I was paying more attention to them and other things around me like plants and trees. But there are so many bugs. And I guess I wasn't seeing them as much when I lived in the city. So I got to take a closer look. They're gross and cool and cute and I don't know…

I guess you're cool with bugs landing on you and crawling over you? For instance, I saw the photo of the tarantula on your head.

Oh yeah, I'm fine with that. That tarantula is actually very sweet. I think her name was Rosie or the type of spider is called a Rosie tarantula [a Chilean rose hair tarantula, perhaps?]. But it was somebody's pet. I was looking for bugs to shoot, and I was trying to wrangle bugs in from the yard and it was harder than I thought. So I found an educator who goes to schools and teaches kids about bugs. I asked him, "Can I borrow you for two hours?” He had spiders and stick bugs and snails and all that stuff. 

So these were bug models?

Yes, exactly. Some were better than others. I have to say the praying mantis was a diva. It was totally cool, but then when the camera was going it was refusing to cooperate. Like, “You cannot take my photo.” But we got her in the end. 

Did you credit them in the album notes?

I don't think so. I mean, I forgot. Umm… I definitely should have gotten their full names. Oh, you know what? I did ask the owner before if there were any special names I should credit and he was like, "I don't know why you're asking me this.”

What is the company? I can give them a shout-out here. 

It is called Pat's Pet Show. He's local, in the west part of Quebec here. I had found him because he also does wildlife rescue. So sometimes when people find a turtle on the road, they'll just call him and he'll go move the turtle or the owl or whatever's in the way. But on the side he also has a lot of bugs. 

You're now living in a rural part of Quebec. Are you better suited for that kind of lifestyle as opposed to a city lifestyle at this stage? 

Yeah, I think so. After living in a city for so long, it was weird to learn that's why I was always stressed or that's why I couldn't sleep. In the city, there are obviously perks because you’re around everything, and I used to live near all the venues so I’d go to see shows and catch up on stuff. But now I definitely feel like at this stage it's way more my speed to be outside the city, for sure. Once you live without the noise it's just such a different thing. The downside is that I'm not as spontaneous. If someone invites me to come to the show tonight, it's going to take me an hour to get there, and by the time I get there, it's over. So I have to plan my moves a little bit more in advance. But that's okay. 

Being where you are, how hard is it to stay in touch with what's going on in the Montreal music scene? 

I would say it's a little difficult because in the past I lived next to venues where I would go see an opening band out of curiosity or I'd just go there and see what's happening. Whereas I don't really do that as much now. So it's more of the digital world where I'm keeping up on stuff. I'm trying to find a happy medium where I can still explore. There is a music scene here in Hudson but it's more like that there are professional musicians in my neighbourhood. Like, my neighbour is in the Sam Roberts Band. But it’s not the same as being in Montreal. So it's a little bit harder to keep up with what's going on. I definitely think I've paid more attention to the local invasive plant species lately more than local bands, unfortunately. 

You asked Nick Flanagan to write your bio. Not only is he funny, but he can also write. I find music bios these days are way too earnest and focused on how many streams or playlist covers an artist has achieved. Some of the bios I read sound like they were generated through AI. It’s pretty sad. Getting a comedian to write your bio really is a stroke of genius. How did you come up with that idea?

Bios are the worst written things. It's brutal. And the last thing I wanted was, like you said, something earnest or just trying to throw out comparisons or use big language to describe something. Because the record is really just what it is. It's very truthful. Like, it’s not trying to be something it’s not. And so I definitely wanted somebody who would hear the humour in the music and know how to put that into words. And so I just DMed Nick and asked if he would do it. Because he's so funny, and he's such a good writer that I felt he would get it, and he did right away. He totally got it. 

You mentioned humour in the music. Is that something that you focus on when you're writing? 

I don't know. I think maybe that comes after the fact, but I don't take myself too seriously. Like, even songs that are heavy musically or the subject matter or whatever, there's still some quirk or optimism or something that is a little bit light about it. Just because I don't take myself that seriously. It’s fine for people who can, but I just can't do it. I'd make fun of myself if I started taking myself so seriously. I think there's always a little tongue-in-cheek or a little prank in the music somewhere. 

One thing I really liked about the bio was the mention of you writing reviews for Exclaim!. As we both know, I edited a lot of those reviews for the magazine, and one review you wrote that has always stood out to me was your review of My Chemical Romance’s second album because I was a huge fan of theirs at the time. What do you remember about your time as a music writer? 

Well, I started writing when I was much younger to get into shows for free. I had a fake zine so I could interview bands but it was a zine that nobody ever saw. From talking to bands I knew I wanted to be a musician, but I was trying to figure out how I fit in. I started when I was younger, just out of high school, and asking them weird questions to try and get a different perspective. As I got older and began writing for Exclaim!, I felt like it was a dark time, especially with live reviews. That was the Buddyhead era of journalism, like when everyone was trying to find something wrong or like with Vice, where everybody's just overcritical. So I think in the background of my mind, I had to say something negative in a review. And as a musician now, I think, “You didn't have to say that about their live show. Maybe they were just having a bad day.” So I definitely feel like I was pretty harsh on some bands for no reason. But sometimes shit-talking stuff gets more attention than just a glowing review. 

I don't know how music journalists can listen to that much music and be able to stay critical and have new thoughts in this age where there's so much out there. Like, kudos to all the writers because I don't think I could do it now. There's just so much out there. 

Speaking of that, shoegaze has blown up and more attention by the music press than it has in decades. It’s become almost this mainstream phenomenon. Having made shoegaze-adjacent music for as long as you have, how do you feel about what is happening? 

I feel like there was maybe a little shoegaze moment before we were out there, like with Asobi Seksu and Blonde Redhead. There have been glimmers in the past, but I think what's interesting about shoegaze is that you've got to fall into a type. Like, you've got to be a Slowdive type or a My Bloody Valentine type, and I feel like Nothing very early on were this Deftones-style of heavy shoegaze. It feels like sometimes listeners expect a genre style to be that way.  

But I feel like a lot of the new bands have this sound to them that is falling into a new category of shoegaze that is just much heavier. So I just find that sometimes you have to be this or that in the genre to reach a bigger audience. But I mean if it gets some of my peers and some of these older bands more listeners and sells more records that’s great. 

Do you listen to a lot of newer shoegaze bands? 

Umm… I try. My favourite kind of thing to listen to is when it's different, and that’s why I love Fire-Toolz because it was confusing to the point of where I'm like, “I don't know what the hell is this!” And maybe on my first listen, I think, “Did I like that?” So I try and listen to things that are a bit more out there; music that wouldn't be categorized as shoegaze. But I'm trying to keep up. Often I think the algorithm is like, “You’re too old. You're not our demographic,” and the music just doesn't come across my feeds or streams. It's not directed at me, which is funny. 

Have you noticed people taking an interest in No Joy recently who might not have known about them before this shoegaze trend took off? 

Yeah, definitely. You know what? Every time I put out a full-length I take a while in between because I'm always trying to figure out what is going on in the music industry. What kind of format is better? What should I do? Every time, even before More Faithful, I was trying to figure out what was going on. What kind of music should I be making? Not necessarily to create something for the industry, but just to understand the world in which we exist. And so I feel like now I have a better hold on things like streaming and social media. So, yes there are more people discovering it, but I would get bored if I made the same record over and over again.

At the same time, if I had stayed in the same lane and made the same record again I’d probably have more listeners. Like, if I made Ghost Blonde right now, I'm sure there would be people who like all of the new bands that would be into it. I just have no interest in doing that again.  

Right. Instead of doing that you worked with Fire-Toolz. How did you hook up with her? 

I just heard her music, first when I was making Motherhood with Chris Walla, who used to be in Death Cab For Cutie. He was engineering a couple songs and he said, “You should hear this. I think you'd like it.” This was like 2018, I think. And I was just so confused. It was so crazy, but it's so hook-y. I didn't know what I was listening to. So I just reached out to her and said, “We should try and write a song together,” because I felt like her production was similar to when I had first heard Lansing-Dreiden and Jorge Elbrecht. I knew that this person understands melody and has a really fearless production style. So we worked on the song “Bugland” together and it took no time to finish. And then because it happened so quickly, I was like, “Okay, let's just keep going and work on other songs.” So it really just happened organically like that. 

Would you describe it as like a full-on collaboration, like what you did with Sonic Boom? Or did she operate more as a producer? 

No, it was a full collab. I would bring in a song, and some were more fleshed out than others, so she took more of a mixing or a production role for those. And then for others, I'd give her a demo that needed something more and then asked her to contribute parts to it. And we weirdly had very similar tastes in music. So everything she added was a perfect fit. 

So it was almost like she was a band member. Is she a part of your touring lineup? 

No, unfortunately, not. But maybe for a special Chicago show she could join us. 

How has it been trying to present this album live compared to previous ones? 

We did three shows last year where we tested some new stuff live to see and it's been fun. I've been adding more of a vocal station so I can do some live mixing, where I’m looping stuff, because some of the songs are kind of vocal-heavy compared to older material. It's always hard though when we record a song with 91 tracks and try to figure out how to play it live. So we do have backing tracks that help with synths and extra stuff. It's a challenge. Some of these songs are not going to sound exactly like album versions; they'll just sound like new renditions of the song. 

I really liked how you featured the saxophone on “Jelly Meadow Bright.” That song feels like you were really going for broke. The bio speaks of channeling a wide variety of tastes into something cohesive. Is there anything that didn’t fit? Or is that what brought the chaos?

Pretty much everything we tried fit into that song. We did have other songs that we started and tried and we just said, “I don't know.” Sometimes the songs needed to cook a little longer. The song “Bugland” was a demo I had from 2016 and it used to be called “White Zombie” because it had a guitar tuning that I was trying out, which I had put it on every record, but it just never clicked. And then with “Bugland” it clicked. But pretty much every idea we had we put in there. 

So the term “Bugland” had been kicking around for a while then? 

Yeah. It’s such a stupid story, but before I moved to the country, I lived in the city with my husband and our cat. One day our cat was trying to eat an ant, and it was on his tongue. It's really not an interesting story at all, but we kind of joke like, “Oh, we're in bugland.” And from then on we kind of always said that we lived in bugland, because there were bugs everywhere. But then once we moved here, it was like a whole other level where you find beetles in your hair. It's pretty wild. We began referring to the house as Bugland; it’s just our way of referring to home. So that title of the record is like an homage to the home that we've built, but also the bugs that live beside us as well. 

The album has a song called “Save The Lobsters.” Do lobsters need saving? 

My mom became a vegetarian when she was 12. And in my head, she became a vegetarian because her mom was cooking lobster, and she couldn't stand it. That story's not actually true. I don't know where I came up with that story, but that's what I imagined happened. But I was on a trip with my mother, and we were walking on the beach and about nine or ten lobster traps had washed up on the shore with live lobsters still in them. And this was at like five in the morning. So I just said, “I am going to break all these traps and release all the lobsters.” I broke all the traps, which as I say this I’m realizing was probably a felony, but I broke all them, one by one, and escorted the lobsters back into the sea. 

For me, it was a meaningful thing because I'm a vegan and I’m always trying to help the environment and help animals. And sometimes donating to rescues and stuff like that is great, but sometimes it feels like it’s not enough. So in that case, I felt like I was doing something with my own hands that was at least helping many dozen lobsters back into the sea in Maine. 

Bugland is being released by Sonic Cathedral in the UK. I interviewed Nat about the label’s 20th anniversary last year. How did you end up working with him?

Nat had done our show in the UK, and I think it was maybe one of the worst shows I've ever played, but he promoted it. So we've known each other for a long time, but I had never put out music on a UK label, and to me shoegaze is synonymous with the UK. I felt like I needed more of a presence over there just because there's such a large fan base and so much history behind the genre there. So I was looking for labels that would have some presence in the UK and Europe. I just sent them the record, sort of like, “Hey, do you like this?” Because Sonic Cathedral has some of the heaviest hitters in shoegaze. I wasn't sure if he would be into the record just because it's not, well, it can be classified as shoegaze but it could also be something else. But he was down, so it just happened from there. 

Did he send you a SHOEGAZER T-shirt? 

Not yet. I kind of want the SHOEGAZER socks though.