Label: Epitaph
Producer: Brett Gurewitz
Release Year: 2026
Listen: Spotify / Apple Music
Apparently Joyce Manor have moved into their this-is-maybe-terrible-on-purpose phase. Why else put out a 19-minute album filled with absolutely nutless tunes on a label — and produced by that label’s owner — that besmirches its punk bonafides? Frankly, it’a a little embarrassing. And, despite the rock ‘n’ roll album cover, this record seems to go out of its way to run from the band’s more rockin’ past. Things have been moving this way, I suppose, as their oeuvre slid toward wallpaper on their last album, 2018’s Million Dollars to Kill Me, but it seems the eight years off have softened them all to the point of cupboard butter.
This album starts with “I Used to Know Where Mark Chen Lives” and you’re like, “Yeah, man, that sounds like an old school emo title if I ever heard one. Maybe these guys will get back on it and make a rock record.” And the track starts up and I was like, “Yes, we are back, baby!” But then the song just kind of cruises in this weird neutral chorus that, frankly, lays there like a dead fish. And then we get “Falling Into It” that sounds like a slightly amped up attempt at a Cars b-side. It goes absolutely nowhere. Womp womp. And then track three, “All My Friends Are So Depressed” comes on, which I think is supposed to be the album’s big “hit.” Yeah, if you were a second-rate Smiths cover band or a Morrissey lounge act, I guess. Is this supposed to be a serious attempt at music? Which brings me back to my original theory that perhaps the band was like maybe we can be a cool jangle-pop Californian Belle & Sebastian. Which sounds so fucking awful that it has to be a joke. Right?
And then they get on their Eagle-Eye Cherry bullshit on track four and it’s almost too much for me to take. I can’t quite put my finger on what annoys me so much about this album. It’s like every song is something different, but I hate all of it. And the lyrics are syrupy and anodyne in a way that feels intentional. Like they’re almost trolling their old audience, challenging us to accept the fact they’re born-again vegans now. Honestly, it’s like meeting up with your college buddy who you haven’t seen in years — the guy who used to be the crazy life of the party — and he’s now a minister in his white-bread church in the Tempe suburbs and drives a minivan with those stickers on the back that tell you how many kids and dogs he has. You order a beer and he gets a water with no ice and the house salad. And all of it makes you want to barf. And, yes, Joyce Manor throw some cusses on this thing and try to get it going a little bit in minute seventeen of this nineteen-minute record — only to revert to a six-second harmonica bleat to end the penultimate track. And a last tune that sounds like something approaching rock music until it too reverts to something that sounds exactly like something else that I can’t quite place, but you’ve heard 1,000 times before. It’s half-assed and not even worth the short time this thing spends on your turntable or in your speakers. Ah, well, see you again in 2034 when these dudes put out their soft rock opus (which I will also not enjoy).
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