Joyce Manor

I love Joyce Manor. I enjoy all of their records. I will see them play live every time they come anywhere near me. They are a fun band. Yet, just as I’m about to hear a new Joyce Manor record, I can’t help but wonder what they can possibly offer that they hadn’t already perfected by time they released 2014’s ‘Never Hungover Again’. Then, I hear the first half a minute of each of these new Joyce Manor records and I get it. I just get it. When you can continue to write songs this good, this fun and this damn catchy – why would you ever stop?

It is easy for bands like this to fall apart and break up easily. The endlessly existential question of what to do next is suffocating for a lot of bands. Joyce Manor never has any problem with this though. They are eternally reliable. They are the case study for what bands should do if they just want to carry on going. The world, at least to me, feels like a better place when Joyce Manor are out here continuing to knock out records every few years. With all of that being said though, it would be incredibly reductive to say that each Joyce Manor record simply sounds like the last one. It isn’t true. Sure, their songs never don’t sound like Joyce Manor songs - fast, energetic sub two-minute slices of infectious power pop - but they always find a way to make them sound fresh at the same time. This new record, ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ might even be their most enjoyable collection of songs yet.

The production sounds a little cleaner, aided by Epitaph boss and Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, but that only serves to make these songs sound even more punchy and infectious. The drums and bass pop on this record unlike any of their previous releases. This latest iteration of Joyce Manor even has them occasionally leaning into the jangly guitars and grey sky crooning of The Smiths on ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed’. Sometimes, they take surprising influence from ‘Armed Forces’ era Elvis Costello like on parts of ‘Falling Into It’. It all works though because, most importantly, every single song on this record contains simply massive choruses. Choruses that when you’ve heard them once, you will wonder how you possibly lived without them. There are enough hooks in this album’s 19-minute run time alone to sustain us all for the rest of the year.

I simply cannot stop playing this record over and over. It’s addictive. I hear it and then all I crave is hearing it again. I could write entire reviews about what I love about each song. It is almost as quick to listen to this album as it is to read my thought on it. So, just go and listen to it. I guarantee that you won’t be able to help yourself going back to it again and again.