Joyce Manor
I Used to Go to This Bar
EPITAPH
In 2016, it seemed likely that the next great era of American punk music would be defined by emotional lyrics and choppy compositions centered around self-destruction, feelings brought on at least in part by the destructive system the genre was initially constructed to take aim at. Albums like PUP’s The Dream Is Over, Trophy Eyes’ Chemical Miracle, and Modern Baseball’s Holy Ghost spoke to listeners who were grinding their teeth through life while still trying to cling to joy. The songs on these records flaunted harmonic refrains and breathy verses about meager paychecks over punchy guitar noise, with a certain structural uniformity coming at the cost of punk’s antiauthoritarian origins; Midwest emo and indie rock established themselves as sonically similar territories without those political associations.
Ten years later, that celebrated era of pop-punk has never changed its damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t attitude—and neither has Joyce Manor, whose own album Cody fell under the banner of melancholic punk records from 2016. It’s coming up on two decades since Barry Johnson, Chase Knobbe, and Matt Ebert set out to make music about modern struggles, and six studio albums later, the trio from LA county have returned to their seat at the head of pop-punk’s pantheon with I Used to Go to This Bar. Produced by Epitaph label head Brett Gurewitz, this latest LP sees Joyce Manor in full frame, firing on all cylinders with signature punchy hooks and catchy choruses powering the album. In line with the rest of their records, I Used to Go to This Bar is 19 minutes of sheer pop-punk glory that’s over before you process the lyric “Lord above Tecate truck” on the early-album single “All My Friends Are So Depressed.”
Johnson deepens the band’s pop-punk legacy with opener “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives,” a proud nod to underground anthem “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives” (as well as to former splitmates Summer Vacation). “Well, Whatever It Was” is carefree and beachy, as it leans into the melodic tendencies familiar to producer Gurewitz’s Bad Religion days—like the surfy offspring of AFI and Taking Back Sunday. “After All You Put Me Through” takes risks on vocals with synth-backed harmony, while closer “Grey Guitar” gets in your face with bloody vulnerability (“We both know that they can’t fix you / They haven’t got the parts,” Johnson sings). Enema of the State engineer Tom Lord-Alge sprinkles technical magic on the aforementioned “All My Friends Are So Depressed,” giving us Joyce Manor at their best: charismatic, on-the-run, and woefully energetic. The single even got them their first-ever radio hit, landing on Billboard’s Alternative Radio chart for 11 consecutive weeks.
Dressed in jangly nostalgia from Southern California’s beach country, I Used to Go to This Bar wears its pop-punk uniform proudly. The album follows Joyce Manor’s 10-year anniversary tour for 2014’s Never Hungover Again, alongside an impressive year of bookings that captured their explosive revival: they shared bills on global tours with MJ Lenderman and Bar Italia, were invited to perform on John Mulaney’s Netflix special, played a sold-out Hollywood Palladium with a cameo from blink-182’s Mark Hoppus on vocal harmonies, and co-hosted a benefit show for victims of LA’s ICE raids. For the first time in their nearly two-decade career, Joyce Manor have secured the attention of fans from rock, punk, emo, indie, and whatever else lands within the umbrella of pop-punk. However fleeting their albums may be, it’s clear that their legacy is here to stay.
