Maybe Next Time Will Be The Last Time

No Joy “Moon In My Mouth”

A very overrated aspect of music culture, particularly online music culture, is chasing after baby bands and hyping them up. It’s the music culture equivalent of the people who rush to type “FIRST!” in a comments section, and it’s more about people trying to accumulate social capital than anything else. An underrated thing is waiting for one of those baby bands to make the jump from promising or pretty good to becoming actually great. No Joy have done this with their third album More Faithful, and it’s a thrill to hear a group of musicians step up and really find their voice.

The first two No Joy LPs were good but not particularly distinctive shoegaze records. This is fairly common in the indie world – shoegaze is a very seductive aesthetic, and you can make superficially beautiful and cool-sounding music in that genre without a lot of technical skill. It’s also a great genre for shy singers, since you can get away with burying your voice under all the noise.

More Faithful is a shoegaze record too, but it’s anything but lazy and bashful. This is an album made by musicians who understand that the best music in this genre – i.e., the work of My Bloody Valentine – is all about sensuality and subtle tonal contrasts applied to strong, melodic songwriting. The record is full of gorgeous sounds and interesting textures, and even better, there’s so much depth implied by the mix that sometimes it seems as though it’s coming at you in 3-D. (I’m particularly fond of the way the apply a severe slap echo on just the word “stop” in the chorus of “Chalk Snake.”) I’ve had a promo of More Faithful for a few months and it’s been in my regular rotation all of that time, and I’m still finding new nuances to love in it after dozens of listens.

“Moon In My Mouth” is the song on More Faithful that I’ve obsessed over for months. It’s a very well-written piece of music, but feels oddly amorphous. It’s performed in an unusual time signature, and though the melodic elements seem to orbit something, it’s not clear what that something actually is. It’s disorienting, but in a very lovely way. One of the best things about “Moon In My Mouth” is though the overall sensation of it is sort of vague, its component sounds are very specific and clean. The extreme clarity of the guitar parts remind me of how Peter Buck’s guitar was recorded and mixed on R.E.M.’s Murmur. There’s something so stunning and surreal about hearing something so crystal clear at the center of an arrangement that otherwise quite atmospheric. Jasamine White-Gluz’s vocal performance is wonderful too – breathy at some points, but very crisp and emphatic in the chorus. I’m so glad she didn’t hold back in singing the song, because that her passion doesn’t compromise the intimacy of this music. It amplifies it.

Buy it from Amazon.