On first listen to I Used To Go To This Bar, Joyce Manor’s 7th album, longtime fans may feel a touch of Déjà Vu. The band is once again releasing about 20-minutes of music. They once again have a new drummer(s)—actually 3 according to the liner notes. “Well, don’t it seem like you’ve been here before?”, now you’re really losing it. You’re not, actually. The rather self aware question is the throat shredding lyrics of “Fuck Koalacaust”, a once arcane recording only available on a rarities collection. Now (thankfully) retitled “Well, Don’t It Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before” is the studio-ified version of the track. With Joyce Manor experiencing unprecedented attention, there’s something beautiful about reviving this deep-cut for potential newcomers

It would be an error to call I Used To Go To This Bar nostalgia bait though. The other eight tracks on this record find Joyce Manor on a refined path all their own. Joyce Manor sounds bigger than ever without feeling overly inflated. Album opener “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives” explosively introduces the album. The palm-muted chugs before the song crashes in feels akin to Foo Fighter’s “All My Life”. The choruses of “Mark Chen” are huge without leaning into full on pop-rock. Johnson’s shouts of “Freight train coming down the track” are melodic but still caustic—still punk. On the flip side, “Well, Whatever It Was” is less thorny in intensity but retains its edge lyrically. The song’s bright sonics are challenged by a montage of mishaps and faux pas that would devastate anyone. In the choruses, Johnson can’t seem to summon a shit to give.

Tracks like The Smiths-y “All My Friends Are So Depressed” present a modulated Joyce Manor—toned down, but still recognizable. Singer Barry Johnson’s lyrics stand front and center, no longer veiled by the usual propulsive distortion. With familiar snark and sarcasm, one of Joyce Manor’s softest songs still feels earnest to their development so far.

Stand out moments across the album side step a “classic” Joyce Manor designation. A few songs return and expand on ideas that felt tangential on past albums. There is a strong thread between Never Hungover Again’s closer, “Heated Swimming Pool”, and I Used To Go To This Bar’s lead-single “All My Friends Are So Depressed.” “Souvenir,” the perplexing Orchestral Moves In The Dark cover that opens 2022’s 40oz to Fresno, seems to have provided guidance for the new-wave-tinged “After All The You Put Me Through” and “The Opossum.” Johnson’s Depeche Mode-esque gravitas feels less foreign here, but you can tell he’s growing into it. While these new songs will not replace what people love about Joyce Manor, their inclusion is a signal that the band favors exploration over complacency.

One of the weak moments of the record is “Falling Into It.” The building instrumentation and Cars-y synth passages show a lot of promise—and hell, the dueling solo guitars even work. The simplicity of the song could very well be the point here. The lyrical focus of the track is just far narrower compared to the rest of the album. The emotional depth or highly referential lyrics found elsewhere makes “Falling Into It” feel like an outlier in the tracklist.

Joyce Manor have developed their songcraft steadily over time. I Used To Go To This Bar showcases this development on a grand scale. Joyce Manor remain vital purveyors of kinetic pop-punk without abandoning expansion. For a band that emerged out of a niche sub-movement of emo called the “revival,” this is uncharted territory. Recent enhancements to the bands profile including late-night appearances, major support slots, and Billboard charting—maybe it goes without saying—are not standard for bands synonymous with the emo revival of the 10s. As survivors of the emo revival, Joyce Manor is in the ever more isolating position of being the band that people remember them being versus the band that they are. Having a canonical revival album such as Never Hungover Again will always be the height their later work will be measured against. Though today Joyce Manor has a very small class of peers. I Used To Go To This Bar shows Joyce Manor continuing to push the boundaries of their sound. “Well, Don’t It Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before?” no, it does not.

Order I Used To Go To This Bar by Joyce Manor HERE