Depending on how you look at it, 10 years can be a long time or a short time.
For Californian noise-punk band Joyce Manor, 10 years is how long it’s been since releasing their career-making third album, Never Hungover Again, a milestone they’ve just gone on tour to celebrate.
Since then, they’ve dropped three more albums, traversed the world with bands like Brand New, Mitski and Mannequin Pussy, gone on hiatus, returned from hiatus and finished making their seventh record – almost.
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Still, for frontman Barry Johnson, it hasn’t felt all that long at all.
“You know, when we toured on Never Hungover Again and played the whole record and really thought about it, the thing I found the most interesting was how little I felt had changed for me,” he says. “I’m still so proud of that record and it doesn’t feel like a different person. It feels like those 10 years kind of flew by.”
Perhaps this proves there’s something timeless about their music. Unlike many of their pop-punk contemporaries, Joyce Manor emerged with a more mature sound – hooky, thrashy and to the point – which has more or less been the DNA of the band ever since.
“Some of the generic tropes of pop-punk, where you have, like, ‘This town is holding us back’ or whatever… we didn’t really have any growing pains of getting rid of that. I was 24 when our first record came out, so I had already written super corny stuff but no one ever heard it, thank God. I got it out of my system before we had to put that in the world forever.”
Their first record, a propulsive, 10-song self-titled jaunt clocking in at less than 20 minutes, built them a reputation on buzzy blogs and internet forums. Then came the equally short-and-sweet Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, before the band dropped their definitive record Never Hungover Again. Despite its critical success, Johnson says it wasn’t an easy one to make, with pressure from all angles to recreate the success of their debut.
“Never Hungover Again…. It’s a super weird record. It doesn’t seem like it now because everyone’s listened to it, spent time with it and enjoyed it. But at the time, it took a long time to get there… People were like ‘You’re thinking about it too much, you’re in your head too much,'” Johnson says. “But for me, I really needed to get weird with it, but also have it stay exciting.”
While they fell in with the pop-punk, emo revival scene of the era, Johnson tells me his songwriting was mostly influenced by indie rock. “We were never a Warped Tour kind of band. Like, I’ve never listened to New Found Glory by choice,” he says. “We love Blink 182, but we’re also huge into Belle and Sebastian and The Wedding Present.”
“I think everything we’ve done since then has leaned a little more power pop, rather than maybe kind of angsty, emo or whatever. But that’s only natural, right? As you get older, you’re maybe a tad less angsty. But try to have some of that angst – who is trying to listen to somebody with no angst? That’s not very exciting.”
Aside from losing a little of that teenage angst, Johnson says aging into his career has been “kind of a trip”. He’s been playing the same songs at each show for the past 10 years and he hasn’t lost any love for them, but at the same time, he feels like he’s never had to become a proper adult.
“I’ve been doing this as my job now since I was 25 – so 2012, we started touring full time. I lived in a studio apartment that I shared with my girlfriend at the time, so my rent was super cheap. I haven’t had to have a job.
“I’ve picked up little part-time jobs every now and then just to keep myself sane, but they were, like, kid jobs. I worked at a bar. I worked in the back of a juice place, making juice. I worked at a record store. I did the jobs that didn’t pay super well, but it was a little extra money and something to keep me from just being unemployed during time off,” he says.
“So I haven’t really had to grow up, but I’m getting old, so that’s interesting, and that feels weird.”
Now, with their seventh record “60, 70 per cent” done, a dedicated fanbase and an Australian tour with The Wonder Years and Suzi in the pipeline, Johnson reflects on why the band’s been able to go the distance.
“I think quality will just hold up the best. If you are moved by your own lyrics, people will understand it. You’re not that different from other people. All of our emotions are basic reptilian animal emotions. So if it does something to you, trust that, use that, go with that. Don’t be like, ‘what do you think of this?’ If your heart aches a little bit when you say something, fucking use it.”
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