Punk heroes Joyce Manor reflect on their own sound on superb sixth album…
There’s something loveably lo-fi about Joyce Manor. Their punk rock is reliably excellent and delivered with little deviation from the path they’ve trodden for 14 years. Perhaps they’ve stuck with what they know because they’re aware of the perilousness of a career in music, as You’re Not Famous Anymore reminds us (‘No meet and greet, no UK tour, now you’re not famous anymore’). Whatever the reasoning, this adherence has made some of the creative decisions on this sixth album stand out. It’s not necessarily that they’re out-there ideas, but they’re choices that say something interesting about Joyce Manor’s relationship with their music. Exactly what, however, is open to interpretation.
Closing track Secret Sisters, as fans will know, is a B-side from the Californian’s third album, 2014’s Never Hungover Again. It’s a surging slab of excellence, so the move to promote it to full-length album status is a respectable, if not entirely innovative, one. What’s stranger is to then rework said song and include it on the same album under a different name. Admittedly, the resulting effort (NBTSA) is a sprightly renovation almost unrecognisable from the track that inspired it, but the question of why the band have done this is a reasonable one. In the wrong hands, one might look at this as a decision that’s at best derivative, and at worst lazy. Neither seems to be the case here.
Given the quality of the rest of this material, from the sun-dappled Reason To Believe to the jubilant Dance With Me, it’s difficult to imagine the well of inspiration has started to dry. What’s more likely given this trio’s aversion to excessive detail for the sake of it, is that this is a continuation of their process of refinement, a subtle re-calibration to take them into their next phase. This appears to be the start of a promising new chapter.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: The Menzingers, PUP, Title Fight
40 Oz To Fresno is out now via Epitaph
