Montreal's
No Joy spent the first decade of their existence slowly expanding their doomy shoegaze template with increasingly adventurous production and songwriting. They'd grown from reverb-masked, guitar-heavy dream pop to the headphone-listening masterpiece that was their third album, 2015's
More Faithful. Several EPs released in the years between
More Faithful and proper follow-up
Motherhood hinted at even deeper experimentation (moments of sludge metal peeked through on 2017's Creep EP and a 2018 collaboration with
Sonic Boom was fully electronic), but nothing set the scene for the beautifully bizarre clashes that make up
Motherhood. From one song to the next,
No Joy's vocalist/songwriter/producer/central member
Jasamine White-Gluz dips into everything from trip-hop grooves to metalcore screaming without ever abandoning the atmospheric dreaminess that has defined the project from the beginning. Opening track "Birthmark" wastes no time introducing the new approach of the album, with a distinctively '90s electro-pop feel made up of huge sampled drums and bouncy synth bass.
White-Gluz had stated she'd returned to bands she listened to in her youth when crafting
Motherhood, and the influence of
No Doubt,
the Sneaker Pimps, and some of the more danceable Brit-pop bands of the '90s shows up on songs like "Nothing Will Hurt" and "Four." Quick shifts are also a key component of the album. "Dream Rats" is a shoegaze take on metalcore, with airy vocals meeting blastbeats and growling backup screams. On most songs, a mishmash of incongruent sounds that shouldn't work together end up sounding surprisingly coherent and interesting. This could be the metallic chaos that begins "Four" opening up to a mellow hip-hop groove complete with slap bass and slowed-down vocal samples or the vocoded singing and haunted piano hooks of "Ageless."
White-Gluz branches out fearlessly in all directions on
Motherhood but never loses the plot. For all its conflicting layers, the album is meticulously crafted and thoroughly enjoyable. In the hands of a lesser talent, this level of genre-hopping and references to nostalgic sounds could be distracting or overwhelming.
White-Gluz controls her songs with a steady hand and a crystalline vision on
Motherhood, and takes
No Joy's always-restless creative spark to unimaginable new places.