“…I’m kind of over it again,” Barry grouses about his state post-Cody. “I’m like, ‘We did four records. I like them all, more or less for different reasons. This seems like a good amount of records, and I’m done with it.’”
Joining forces with Rory Phillips, the vocalist and guitarist of ska-punk band The Impossibles, Barry skeptically emailed him vocals with acoustic guitar. “I was like, ‘That’s weird. I don’t even know this guy. We never met. Like, how are you gonna make music through email?’” However, a month later, Rory sent the song back, and the product was the final version of Silly Games.
“I was like, 'Whoa, this legitimately sounds like The Beatles,’” says Barry. The song went on to be one of the highlights of the record. He continued to bounce ideas off Rory, and Friends We Met Online and Wildflowers were the products. Originally, the frontman considered these to be his solo songs, but, soon enough, the band got together and conceived the rest of the album. “It was kind of thrown together. It was some leftovers from Cody, it was some stuff I was doing with this guy from Texas through e-mail.”
The album was set for release when Barry almost cancelled it. It was the birth of the last track, Wildflowers, that stopped him and salvaged the whole process.
“Wildflowers is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever written,” he says of the track, a perfect ending to the conflicted record. Ultimately, Barry's dissatisfaction with the band's work is one of the elements that draws fans to Joyce Manor: a perspective layered in an instinctive darkness. You can have nihilism without Joyce Manor, but you can’t have Joyce Manor without nihilism.