Joyce Manor – I Used To Go To This Bar: Album Review

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Joyce Manor are at their most relatable on ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed’, a vulnerable rumination on collective wellbeing, or the lack of it.

It’s fair to say that the poppier end of punk (or the punkier end of pop, if you prefer) has cultivated a bit of an image problem.

You can argue this goes back to The Offspring’s -ism heavy Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), or is down to pretty much anything Blink 182 did/continue to do, but despite an army of better stuff from other guys to point to, there’s still a wariness sometimes to engage.

Joyce Manor (named after an apartment complex, not the owner of a local diner) have paid a lot of the necessary dues to not be affected by that kind of stigma.

From Torrance in California, Barry Johnson, Chase Knobbe and Matt Ebert have remained the band’s nucleus whilst a revolving cast of in particular drummers, oh so many drummers, have been part of the project.

Fandom means that opinions on who they are and what they’re meant to be vary wildly, but Joyce Manor have, throughout a career which began with a 2011 self-titled debut, had the nous to keep things brief and to the point, their previous outing ’40 oz. To Fresno’ clocking at roughly seventeen minutes total.

For its follow up I Used To Go To This Bar they aren’t messing around either, with Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion kingpin and owner of their Epitaph label) brought in on production duties.

A punk legend himself, Gurewitz has been fulsome in his praise, suggesting: “Unlike their peers they’re writing timeless songs for the American Songbook. If Barry was a novelist, he’d be Ernest Hemingway. To me, they’re among the most important bands of the last two decades.”

With that kind of juice expectations for I Used To Go To This Bar are surely high, and whilst none of the nine songs it contains reach the three-minute mark, they still make plenty of an impression.

Opener I Know Where Mark Chen Lives needs some context (Chen was vocalist for Summer Vacation and Winter Break, whom Johnson feels were under appreciated), but its stiff-arm chops and no-frills thrash are satisfying enough without it.

There are moments of playfulness if not outright concession to an audience conditioned to their subject matter of stranded relationships, breakdowns and temporary escape; the title-track throws itself wide open and brings a mosh pit friendly vibe, whilst The Opossum has an almost rootsy feel to it despite the velocity.

Those who find solace in tales of the broken will also be satisfied with Well, Don’t It
Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before?, buoyed by a harmonica its lyrical spray traverses the boredom of pattern behaviours whilst closer Grey Guitar admits that there’s nothing left to be done with: “We both know that they can’t fix you/They haven’t got the parts.”

Not lingering, Joyce Manor are at their most relatable on All My Friends Are So Depressed, a vulnerable sounding rumination on collective wellbeing, or the lack of it.

Weary but battle hardened, Joyce Manor is here and then gone in almost the blink of an eye.

Is it pop punk, or punk pop? I Used To Go To This Bar is good enough for that not to even matter.

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