1.) Finding that love has been right before your eyes all along
2.) It being like dawn just after it was darkest
3.) getting a warm letter from a distant friend
3.) a day that doesn't involve going into shock for 10 hours
Finding my housemate deceased before breakfast may offer some creedence, but we'll let the panel of experts make that call. A wise man might suggest withholding such grievances on a format this unseemly. That man has likely not scrubbed stale blood off a wall while subduing abject horror. You'd think the medical examiner or a couple EMTs - people whose JOB entails desensitization to corpses and viscera could bust out some windex and fix that up, but you'd be wrong.
One thing's for certain, though: I didn't really like the last Joyce Manor album.
Then there's this:
I mean, not this, per se, but if you can imagine this song being played without a headless mannequin in blue jeans, then yeah, this. But let's real talk, you and me. Have a beer. We're all men here, burying our fear of mortality with innebriants: I'm not really feeling this new track. And yeah, it could be because it's boring, but see, in the past - the halcyon days, if you will - this wouldn't have mattered. No, because I championed the dix out of Joyce Manor, and with that comradery comes faith and integrity. Roll out a 12 minute LP after two full years? Aw yea bby tease me! Repackage two dumbed down versions of previously released tracks? Shit yes brother let's take this journey in a different light. A couple years ago I would've given this stupid 82 second track like six billion listens until it's constricted my teenage heart with vines of passion. But that was a different time, and since 2014's fantastic Never Hungover Again, the band's aged, and with that came a startling decline into placidity. Namely the drummer, who plays everything all normal now.
Cody - like every recording prior - shows commitment to growth, showcasing a band who's disinterest in pandering borders on contempt. Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but what I always expected out of Joyce Manor was change - all in accordance with the principle that I'd personally enjoy it, though. Cody shows the band slowing down, polishing their edge and getting a Brazilian on the stubbly bits. Genitalia. But that's what I liked about the band - there was always something a little manic and angsty in there, even as they moved away from the rawness of their early EPs and debut.
When "Fake ID" hit I felt every one of the 16-26 muscles in my face strain to smile. "O-okay it's a little... a little different. That line about Kanye West is pretty embarrassing but... it's not bad!". But it was. "Fake ID" is easily the most nauseatingly happy and flat out, uh, 'stupid' sounding song the band's ever recorded, and this is AFTER they covered "Video Killed The Radio Star". A cover that eats up 2 minutes of a 5 second long album! WTF LOL. And yeah, it gets better from there, seeing as that stevia enema kicks things off, but not by much. Apparently "Stairs" is one of the first songs Barry ever wrote, and it's not hard to believe. I have no idea why they thought it was worth re-recording over a decade after the fact, but it's their longest to date, and startlingly boring for a band that tends to work best in the eyebrow arching territory. Similarly, "Do You Really Want To Not Get Better?" is a little mopey acoustic blob with no hook. Remember "Drainage" and "I'm Always Tired"? Same idea but, like, I mean they literally added it at the last second to make the tracklisting a nice even ten. That inspires confidence.
All that said, I actually really like "Make Me Dumb", and "Over Before It Began", which might be my favorite 'ballad-y' song they've ever done. The rest is okay, I guess. I dunno. "Angel In The Snow" would've fit nicely on Never Hungover Again, but honestly, I just don't feel any emotional connection to most of the tracks here. Nothing really brings the goosebumps or the bends (except "Fake ID", I mean). It's all kinda just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I had to copy and paste that. I don't do MSDOS.
Y'know something? I didn't want to see that; someone I knew in a frozen gnarl, sprawled horizontally across a cot in a room teeming with 40s and neglect. I didn't want to have that image churning and morphing in my brain like some animate carving. I never knew them well, so I can't feign loss, but the emotions that are teeming up from bearing witness to it are something I'd never wish on anyone. That's it, I guess - the drab conclusion to all the times I entertained suicide: to be cold furniture in a still room. And it's people's fucking job to ride that wave of nausea every single day, never letting it crest because the backlash would put them out of work.
But yeah, not so into that album.
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