“Joyce Manor is playing in my room. As if that’s going to help us,” the great Nogato used to say. It’s more than just a generational nod; it’s a concise way of capturing the band’s essence—an essence as compressed as the runtime of their tracks and albums. They are still locked in those small bedrooms, clinging to that same last resort after a fifteen-year career. With their latest release, Barry Johnson and company prove that you can grow up without losing the ability to synthesize high-stakes emo/pop/punk drama into less than two hundred seconds. Under the baton of Brett Gurewitz (the Epitaph big shot), the group dispatches nine cuts in a 20-minute breath, maintaining the brevity that has become their trademark.
Once again, Johnson, Knobbe, and Ebert manage to conjure hooks that lodge themselves in your brain like parasites. The opener, “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives,” is a slap of radiant pop-punk, but it’s in the nuances where the record gains its weight. “Falling into it” moves into unapologetic Weezer territory. They surprise us with the jangle-pop touch of “All My Friends Are So Depressed,” a song that uses a galloping chorus to camouflage devastating lyrics that could easily have been penned by The Smiths or Belle & Sebastian.
The direction taken in their previous record, 40 Oz. to Fresno (2022), where the contrast between energetic melodies and introspective passages ruled the day, is the key here. We no longer see the unhinged Joyce Manor of their masterpieces Joyce Manor (2011) or Never Hungover Again (2014). Occasionally, the overly polished production drags down the less inspired tracks (“After all you put me through” is terrible).
The mastery of this long-awaited album lies in how they once again condense—much like their album covers featuring photos of friends—a sound where they trade raw speed for a stronger identity in every snapshot. Songs like “Well, Whatever It Was” are the perfect example: don’t be fooled into thinking they’ve softened their style; in reality, they’ve just dressed it up for the occasion.