No Joy’s Wild Path to Bugland
Jasamine White-Gluz of No Joy. Photo credit: Samuel Fournier.
September 29, 2013 was a big night. It was the night of the series finale of Breaking Bad, quite possibly the last linear scripted television event where everyone had to be somewhere at a specific day and time, before the streaming era began in earnest and those rules shifted to watching things whenever you want. September 29, 2013 was also a big night as it was the last time No Joy performed in Calgary and the Breaking Bad finale impacted when they performed, down to scheduling their performance after the finale aired on AMC.
Now, just over a decade later, Jasamine White-Gluz and No Joy are coming to Calgary as part of the annual DandyFest at Dandy Brewing Company on Saturday, September 13th. A one day event running from noon to 10 p.m., it features a great mix of local heroes like Chad VanGaalen and Carter Felker, and visiting legends like Chris Cohen and Still Depths. Jasamine told me she is very excited to come back to Calgary, remarking “I have so many friends who live there, I love it there, it is such a fun city. I am very excited to get back to Alberta.”
The first time I heard No Joy was when their debut album Ghost Blonde was released in 2011, and I heard it spotlighted on the seminal comedy and music show The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling. I was smitten with their brand of shoegaze brought into the 21st century and No Joy has only gotten better with each successive album, led by the formidable Jasamine White-Gluz. What inspired her to start making music? The one and only Courtney Love. “I picked up a guitar after hearing Hole’s Live Through This. Just hearing that was life-changing, that was the first time I picked up a guitar. Whether I was making music, I don’t know, I was probably making sound, but that was the spark.” Courtney Love is an influential touchstone in White-Gluz’s music career, and we’ll get into why in a bit (or I should say in a “Bits”).
White-Gluz is based just outside of Montreal, one of the greatest music cities in the world. How does she classify the Montreal scene and what she feels sets it apart? “Montreal to me is a great place to make music because changes happen very slowly. You could live in Montreal, go on tour for two years, come back and things are kind of the same. Things don’t change very quickly, scenes hand off to other scenes as they morph in and out, so there’s this connection that is keeping people, who are coming and going, whether they are from Edmonton or New York, it’s always morphing but the city itself doesn’t change very quickly. I found that to be pretty comforting when I would leave on tour for a really long time, and when I come back and know that everything is exactly where I left it in the city. Something I also notice, probably the same as Alberta, it’s so dictated by the weather. In the winter time, it’s often you are trapped inside, you are either recording, going to shows, working with people or going to parties. In the summer, there’s some kind of hallucination of nice weather where you want to be outside, in the parks, and you are just around all the time. I am the first one, in March when it’s 18 degrees to be in a bathing suit and be like “let’s go!!” There’s extremes in that sense.”
Who are some of Jasamine-White Gluz’s Montreal favourites? She first shouted out the Polaris Prize-nominated (and past REVERIE Magazine subject) Ribbon Skirt!
White-Gluz also mentioned another REVERIE favourite, Marlaena Moore, noting “she’s such an incredible singer/songwriter.” She also loves Ura Star and Fireball Kid, who are playing alongside No Joy at their POP Montreal show on September 26th, with her noting “I feel like they are the future of music” She also shouted out veterans Suuns and Besnard Lakes (“they still doing things from a production point of view that are so interesting”), as well as Patrick Holland (“who makes incredible music of all genres”) and recent Sled Island headliner TOPS (calling them “juggernauts”).
Being a fan of No Joy for over a decade, it’s been gratifying to see the progression White Gluz has taken with her music, trying out new things and broadening out their scope. That is especially evident on Bugland, where she connected with Chicago-based experimental music phenom Fire-Toolz (Angel Marcloid). How did White-Gluz and Fire-Toolz connect? In her words, she just “fangirled and DM’d her.” She elaborates, “I was a fan of Fire-Toolz, there was something about it, production and songwriting wise, where I felt like we come from the same place, even though our output is different. So I just DM’d her, and said “want to work on some songs?”
That first song was the title track, “Bugland,” a demo which Jasamine had lying around since 2016, under the original title of “White Zombie,” as the guitar sound Jasamine was getting reminded her of “More Human Than Human” and other White Zombie-related mid ’90s bangers. Fire-Toolz brought the influence of Korn, dropping in some Fieldy-esque basslines to the track, knowing that they both have an unironic love of nu-metal (which this author appreciates) and they finished the song in a day, which inspired them to do even more songs together.
Stylistically, White-Gluz had scenarios in her head she wanted to achieve with the Bugland album, including “what if Boards of Canada were a four piece rock band?” or “what if Enya and Deerhunter played a show together?” Her touchstones in Bugland were trying to find records in an artist's discography where they took a left turn. White-Gluz loves to bring in a collaborator, as she is not precious with her material. She explained “I like to have my pieces done, and then I like to bring someone else in. I am always looking to collaborate with people... I bring my songs in, and they bring what they do in, and we collaborate. There’s no “I want things to sound a certain way.” I like to tear things apart and build them back up with somebody.”
To go back to White-Gluz’s admiration of Courtney Love, that comes into focus on the second pre-release single, “Bits,” which has an amazing origin story, going back to age ten:
“You know when you’re a kid and you’re just creative and I was like I am going to write a novel, it was like a fantasy, kind of a reimagination of Courtney Love’s life. This little novel started with a preface that said “ATTENTION MUSIC JOURNALISTS: the reason I am writing this is because you were so cruel to her, she did nothing wrong and she is a great role model.” I agree on all accounts! She further reflected: “I found it and I found it so hilarious, but I was like, right on! Good for you for calling people out! I am reading parts of that letter in “Bits” throughout the song. Musically, I was using Earthquaker Devices, one of my favourite guitar pedal companies. I was blowing the crap out of it using one of their pedals, it was maxed and cracking, so I was having a lot of fun with that pedal while writing this song. Fire-Toolz brought in her expertise with her synth sound, and rearranged the middle section to have this sort of dreamy moment.”
The final pre-release song is the evocatively titled “My Crud Princess.” What was the origin of the song and what does a Crud Princess mean to her? “I would notice being out in the garden, starting to walk around in the garden with no shoes, I thought I am so disgusting right now, but you accept that you are going to have dirty hands, you are going to find bugs in your hair, and you are like, oh I guess that’s how it is now. You kind of own it and like it after a while. It’s about feeling confident.” Alberta ex-pat Tara McLeod adds some striking banjo to the song, with White-Gluz noting “I love having the banjo where it sounds sort of out of place, it’s sort of like harpsichord effect.”
Fire-Toolz was a major part of Bugland, and none more so than on the final track, “Jelly Meadow Bright.” White-Gluz elaborates, “That song is the biggest Fire-Toolz collab, she really went to town on this one. From where it started to ended up, it’s one of my favourite things I have ever done. It is really the statement piece of the record and really signifies where we can go with this kind of music, it’s one of the longest songs I have ever had. It is a real journey. When I first got the mixes back from her, I was in the car listening, and a double rainbow appeared in the sky! it was the last song we had done, last song we had finished, it felt like a sign, saying this is it, this is the perfect conclusion to the record.”
For the rest of 2025, No Joy will be doing shows including a showcase at POP Montreal, then Project Nowhere in Toronto and later performing in Ottawa and then wrapping the year with a couple weeks in the UK and throughout Europe.
Bugland is due out Friday, August 8th, via Hand Drawn Dracula Records, timed perfectly to the end of summer, so you too can become a Crud Princess, as you listen to the double-rainbow-evoking jams by No Joy and Fire-Toolz.