On Repeat: Dream Rats by No Joy Is An Absolute Trip
Tristan Young @talltristan
If there was any debate on the potential intersectional synergy between Shoe Gaze and Death Metal, Dream Rats by No Joy should put them the hell to rest. The returning, and now solo, project by Montreal based provocateur Jasamine White-Gluz, No Joy has gone through something of a hibernation and metamorphosis in recent years. While previously defined through its pursuit of noise pop bliss, in her new album Motherhood, No Joy has transubstantiated into something far more sprawling, and with a fractious instrumental palate. The track Dream Rats (cool name) vividly highlights the artistic and aesthetic potential of White-Gluz’s reimaging of the project. Teaming up with her sister Alicia, who is the lead singer of Swedish Death Metal outfit Arch Enemy (also cool name), the two artists take this song to some absolute places. Dazed and illusive chords cozy up to each other with a dream like verve until Alicia tears a hole through it all with an eviscerating howl. Raging and pugilistic percussion streaks along her wake as warbling guitars drown in their own reverb. It seems for a brief moment the song will succumb to the vicissitudes of an obviously more aggressive genre, but that’s not what happens. Somehow the shoe gaze cadence reasserts itself against the primacy of Alicia’s shrieks. Ethereal and Starry guitar strings, usually plucked with yearning temperance in any other song, rush forward with urgent abandon, unrelenting to the cacophony trying to overwhelm them. Rather than a ruinous dichotomy, the two strands find gorgeous equilibrium, with both aspects accentuating their merits while muting their excesses. With this unexpectedly exhilarating symbiosis the two sisters examine the themes of Motherhood and the fears and resentment that arise from being treated merely as a vector to produce children. “Sorry to be so upset/ every little child’s a threat”, Jasamine retorts of those inchoate bastards. Comparing the womb to a tomb that we are all born in, she optimistically offers to simply let go of these societal designs, “may your womb dry up”. You won’t be any less of a woman by not having a child is her obvious implication, but still not obvious enough to so many people. Like the exotic marriage of ethereal and primal rage, women can be defined by many roles. As the feral guitars grow harder to separate from Alicia’s deleterious screams, they become a source of comfort and inspiration, even as they eventually yield to the relieving visage of the pop melody. Dream Rats is a wonderfully illustrative take on turning confines and constriction into a passage way to opportunity and discovery. What can’t the Swedish do?