40 oz. To Fresno was recorded at Mant Sounds in Glassell Park, California, in a few blocks between the summer of 2020 and early 2021, with regular producer Rob Schnapf behind the desk and Motion City Soundtrack’s Tony Thaxton on drums. Its disparate threads and provocative choices – it opens with a cover of OMD’s Souvenir, ends with an eight year old B-side – are held together by easy chemistry and songs that, in Barry’s words, slam.
Joyce Manor continue to make interesting structural calls, ditching verse-chorus-verse in favour of moments such as the single Gotta Let It Go, which uses a guitar break as its essential hook, and Did You Ever Know, which moves in a straight line without repeating any element. On the other hand, Don’t Try is 100 seconds long and features four choruses. “I don't know that there is another song like that,” Barry says. “Maybe Song 2 by Blur, but that’s two minutes.”
“One of our most popular songs is Beach Community, and it only has one chorus,” he continues. “But it's so obviously the chorus that even when it only happens once, it doesn't feel like that. At all. It feels like the song builds towards this chorus and then it resolves.
“It feels totally, completely thought out.”
40 oz. To Fresno is released on June 10 via Epitaph