No Joy Wait to Pleasure (10th Anniversary Edition) LP

Wait to Pleasure may not provide you with any new answers about No Joy, but what it does offer is a batch of incredible songs, the product of the Montreal noise-pop band's first foray in a fully furnished studio environment. Here the band has flourished, delivering their finest set to date, rooted heavily in shoegaze ripcurls and devastating melody, finishing sentences whispered long ago with depth, variance and force. This 10th Anniversary Edition includes two unreleased bonus tracks.

While the follow-up Wait to Pleasure is by no means less obscured by feedback and noisy textures, the songs have a sense of clarity and determination that separates them from the band's earlier work....The album is diverse without ever losing focus, shifting from shoegaze meltdowns to the more goth-pop electro of 'Blue Neck Riviera' without sounding like the work of two different bands. No Joy succeeds wildly on Wait to Pleasure, referencing enormous influences without really using them as the sole template for their sounds. Along with contemporaries like DIIV, Fear of Men, Echo Lake, and a handful of others, No Joy falls into the camp of bands not just updating a style for the sake of nostalgia or lack of imagination, but actually pushing the boundaries of established great ideas. In their best moments, No Joy not only expand on these ideas, but improve on them.