Mexican Summer
Shoegaze is a colourful music right down to the album covers. At the bare essentials one could cover three varieties of shoegaze within the three primary colours: My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is lustful red Ride’s Nowhere is oceanic blue wave and Catherine Wheel’s Ferment covers diluted yellow. To limit the genre to these primaries however would ignore the possible combinations therein — this is further articulated by the orange and green hues that adorn the cover of Ghost Blonde the first LP from Montreal’s No Joy. Comparisons to MBV and Sonic Youth can be drawn all over Ghost Blonde but there’s an air of authenticity that firmly separates No Joy from the realm of unworthy pastiche.
No Joy’s guitar rhythms tend to have more in common with Sonic Youth than any shoegaze band which may explain the Montreal combo’s deviation from strictly classicist ‘gazer norms. "Still" and "You Girls Smoke Cigarettes?" for example expose the guitar in a raw state relying on visceral Thurston-esque drive more than blurred delay. However the reverb-heavy vocal melodies place No Joy squarely in the MBV-influenced fold — the title track may as well be the Montreal group’s very own "Soon" closing the album with six minutes of descending guitar melody that begs to be repeated endlessly. While not breaking any huge new boundaries Ghost Blonde is undoubtedly the most authentic and enjoyable shoegaze album to have surfaced in years.
