“I Hate That I Forget What You Look Like”

No Joy, Bugland

Aug 21, 2025

You wanna talk shoegaze? Come at me, I can go for hours. I was there, man. Okay, not actually there in the UK, but I was there spiritually. Back in the early ’90s, I was into anything with a shimmering wall of guitar and haunted, indecipherable vocals singing in a language all their own. Whether listening on headphones, in my car with the shitty speakers cranked, or blaring out of the family sound system (when no one else was home), I was all in on any music I could sink into.

In my current grumpy-old-guy-into-80s-and-90s-indie era, I’m not interested in arguing about whether “shoegaze” is actually a genre (FYI: it’s not, but I’ll concede to it being a specific style of pop and rock for the moment) or who was the first “shoegaze” artist (Cocteau Twins, BTW). However, I am very curious to hear about other people’s entry points into that particular musical aesthetic. Mine happened on May 2, 1989: the day the Cure’s Disintegration came out. There are very few songs that I remember hearing for the first time, but the sense memory of having “Plainsong” literally crash down all around me is as vivid now as it was then.

And before you get your bloomers in a tizzy: no, the Cure are not traditionally considered a shoegaze band, but I ask you, what even is a “traditional” shoegaze band, when no one can adequately pin it down as a genre? The allure for me had less to do with the style of music and more with the feeling of falling right into the heart of the record, that sense that the musicians were not just composing music but constructing a world that you could live in.

Artists like Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine are world builders. The former constructed whole universes out of glossolalia (look it up, I had to) and shimmer; the latter bent guitars until they bled distortion and feedback like some kind of stigmata. World-builders have a musical vision and aural audacity distinctly their own, even when built from the same foundational template as their peers.

And yes, there are world-building artists throughout the history of popular music, not just the bands lumped together under the shoegaze banner, but that particular tag is the most germane when it comes to talking about Bugland, the bucolic beauty of an album from No Joy.

I would love to talk shoegaze for hours with No Joy’s Jasamine White-Gluz. That’s the tag I’ve most often seen used to describe the “band,” which is now ostensibly White-Gluz’s solo project, and it totally fits looking back through No Joy’s highly accomplished and critically lauded back catalogue. But what I’d most be interested in talking about after listening to Bugland multiple times over the last few weeks and reading some of its recent press is how I believe White-Gluz and I are kindred spirit-insects when it comes to appreciating world-building artists who transcend genre. I, too, believe Zooropa is the best U2 album hands-down (come at me), and I hear its influence in the way Bugland constructs a sonic language and history all its own out of familiar ingredients. As she explains to Range magazine, she “tried to avoid being too overly inspired by any one thing. I would instead be like ‘What if Boards of Canada were a four-piece noise band?’ and use that as a launching point to build on.”

What if—two magical words that differentiate between artists inspired to create and those who aspire to emulate. So while No Joy is throwing plenty of sonic cues that are ringing all kinds of nostalgic bells for me, Bugland sounds remarkably fresh and wildly unpredictable. The answer to White-Gluz’s hypothetical query about Boards of Canada? It could be Bugland’s frenetic title track. What if the fourth member of Cocteau Twins was Pop Will Eat Itself’s Clint Mansell? You’d likely end up with the biting and bombastic “Bits.” Ever wonder what would happen if Slowdive picked up a little more speed? You might end up with the careening pop crescendos of “My Crud Princess.” Curious about what Taylor Swift’s Midnights would have sounded like if produced by Curve’s Dean Garcia? I suggest getting acquainted with the sleek slice of synth-pop “Save the Lobsters.”

You get the point.

Bugland is teeming with familiar “shoegaze” markers, but doesn’t feel beholden to them. White-Gluz isn’t interested in simply recreating a specific sound; she’s constructing an environment. Rather than working on the album in a sterile, isolated studio environment, she decamped to a rural, rustic retreat to write and conceive most of Bugland, and you can hear the influence of the place and her process in every track. I don’t know if it’s just because I’ve been enjoying Bugland in the heart and heat of a humid, mosquito-heavy Southern Ontario summer, but songs like “Garbage Dream House” and “Bather in the Bloodcells” hiss and hum with humidity and feel squishy like a mossy bed found deep in a secluded forest.

Closing track “Jelly Meadow Bright” (which features experimental musician and White-Gluz’s co-producer, Angel “Fire-Toolz” Marcloid) is the kind of song that breathes as much as it pulses, which is pretty much true of the whole record. Where most shoegaze often feels like you are peering into an imagined dreamscape, Bugland is rooted in a tangible world that could only have grown out of its specific geography and lived experience. There’s an earthiness to No Joy’s music; even in the most synthetic moments, White-Gluz reminds us that electronic precision still feels alive when it’s fed by natural energy.

Here is where the genre label starts to crumble. Calling Bugland “shoegaze” is accurate in the same way calling Heaven or Las Vegas “dream pop” is accurate: it tells you something about its textures but nothing about its deeper architecture. Like the best world-building records, it invites you to stay awhile, to notice how the light, mood, and your own emotions change as the songs progress from one to another. It is why I’ve been coming back to it over the last little while: it reminds me of albums like Disintegration, Loveless, and Heaven or Las Vegas in how it just pulls me under its spell. Bugland is most definitely a modern-day example of musical world-building, a veritable menagerie of creep-crawly sonic craftspersonship.

Call it shoegaze if you want. I call it magic.

a little more [t]here [t]here 🪩

Not quite the main act, but still on the stage.

Though I’ve been following No Joy for quite some time, Bugland marks the first time I’ve ever formally written about them, so I don’t have any previous reviews to connect you to, but in the spirit of world-builders, here are four albums by world-building artists, two of whom you might consider shoegazey, two you most definitely would not. All, coincidentally, were released in 2023.

La Force, XO Skeleton