Montreal psych-rockers No Joy are currently speeding across Canada in their first headlining trek through the country. But for two members of the feedback-heavy trio, touring North America in a van has been a recurring pattern for the better part of a decade.
“It was really good experience just throwing yourself out there, and I learned a lot,” said Victoria native Laura Lloyd, who plays guitar in the group.
“When you don’t really know what’s happening and you don’t know what to expect, it is preparation for now, when we get paid for it and people want to see us perform.”
No Joy were driving Monday to Edmonton for yet another tour date — a situation both Lloyd and her longtime bandmate, singer-guitarist Jasmine White-Gluz, are well familiar with.
No Joy is the latest in a long line of projects for Lloyd and White-Gluz, who began working together when Lloyd was in her mid-teens.
The two have been proactive in their quest to make music their living, trying their hand at various groups and musical styles along the way (Lloyd, at one point, played bass in a Ramones cover band). White-Gluz formed a pop-rock band of her own, Bad Flirt, in 2002; Lloyd joined the group in 2005, and the rest is history.
Lloyd was just 16 when she joined Bad Flirt. To travel across the border for concerts, she had to have a signed letter from her parents granting her permission to travel, with White-Gluz playing the role of her legal guardian.
Those days are long behind them. No Joy entered the picture in 2009, with a radically revamped, guitar-driven sound that immediately caught on with both listeners and critics.
No Joy’s brand of “doomgaze” occupies a unique place in the Canadian music community. In fact, Lloyd says, their nationality is often misunderstood.
“A lot of people think we are American,” she said with a laugh. “There is an association, because our label is based out of Brooklyn, and we have only really toured with American bands.”
The band’s second full-length recording, Wait to Pleasure, has drawn their best reviews, making good on the promise of their debut, 2010’s Ghost Blonde. For Lloyd it caps a dizzying few years in which she has grown greatly as a musician.
But her first job was well outside the realm of music — she was a carrier for the Times Colonist. “It was my first job. I was 11 or 12. I think I lasted maybe two weeks. Getting up at 5 a.m. was kind of a weird schedule in elementary school.”
What little money she did make during her time in the newspaper business, Lloyd remembers, she “blew on candy.”
Before moving to Montreal with her family, when she was 14, she developed a strong interest in music.
Around the time her father, Evan, who at the time was an assistant deputy minister with the B.C. government, was eyeing new job opportunities, Lloyd took her musical desire a step further and began picking away at a guitar.
Lloyd said she had been using a “really crappy” classical that her mother, a teacher, found in a classroom at Lansdowne Middle School.
By the time she was in Montreal, Lloyd decided to go legit and take some lessons.
“I couldn’t ever pick it up,” Lloyd said with a laugh. “I gave up on that really quickly. My teacher really just wanted to teach me theory before I even touched the guitar, which is not for me.”
She has gained a considerable set of skills in the years since.
No Joy, which also includes drummer Garland Hastings, makes a rapturous racket on stage, and expectations are that its upcoming European tour (which takes the trio from the U.K. through Eastern Europe) will break their sound to a bigger audience.
Lloyd said she will be happy with whatever scenario presents itself. If she has learned anything from being in bands, it’s that life always has a way of working itself out.
“I know every highway like the back of my hand,” she said of No Joy’s endless tour schedule, which has sent the group across the U.S. about 10 times. “But the reason we keep doing it is because it keeps getting better.”
