If the jump in page views and traffic is any indication, covering current stuff is a lot more lucrative (in the pat-on-the-back sense) than being another 24 year old conveying the "Jawbreaker ROOLZ" message to a supersaturated interbutt-browsing populous. I'm not saying that I'm done plugging non-current shit just for the attention, it's just that I've been feeling way more into THE NAO lately, which has never really been the case. Checking out new music has proven to be way more opportunistic and fun in a lot of ways, seeing as they still play and produce new tuneage, and for the moment, I am all about that shit. Moreover, every time I think about the fact that I'll probably never get to see Discount, The Broadways, and Boris The Sprinkler play in my lifetime it makes me very upset.
SO COME, JOIN ME AS WE MARCH INTO THE POP P0NX FUTURE:
I really, really like Joyce Manor. I unashamedly believe the hype, and I would kiss all up on their faces and shit to display the deep bond I've formed with their creative execration. In figgety-fact, their self-titled LP - despite dropping less than 2 years ago - has quickly crawled way up on my Favorite Album Totem Pole, and sits pretty comfortably alongside such lusty entities as The Weakerthans' Fallow, Common Rider's Last Wave Rockers, and American Steel's s/t in terms of pure enjoyability. It's especially satisfying considering I only picked them up on a whim, and while it's not a mInDbLoWiNg reinvention of the pop-punk wheel, it IS a crazy solid, nearly flawless bit of eyewatering angstmagic I could easily spin til' infinity. If songs like "Beach Community" and "Famous Friend" wanna remain anchored to my psyche like cathartic, fist-pumping tumors forever, I think I'll be alright with that.
But this post isn't about the seepia tinted olden days of the self-titled (seeing as I've always thought it was radcakes), although maybe it should be. See, I came into this post thinking you'd be fully aware of my rabid fandom already, but as it turns out, I never even finished that earlier Joyce Manor post or have ever had any readers. Regardless, frowns were frowned and harsh words were exchanged betwixt me and last year's followup LP, Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired. I'm not gonna quote any of it (because it seems sorta dumb and buttmad), but essentially I was like: "shit's underwhelming, brah. it's too short and unlike the s/t". I stood by this after a few dozen listens following this un-posted post, too, but time has a way of making stools of us all. And well, yeah, it is way too short for a "full length" - like, "come on, you assholes" short - and pretty unlike the s/t, but you could generally do a lot worse than not repeating yourself and only writing 11 minutes of new material.
While the self-titled was a fairly straightforward, smoothly flowing set of 9 songs in 18 minutes, OATIWSGT is a pretty big overhaul, and a gutsy one at that. Here, the distortion's been turned down from "BZZZZ" to "bzzz", the hooks are floating on the surface
To assure yew, this still sounds unmistakably like Joyce Manor. Yeah, Barry Johnson's cut most of the shrieking desperation from his voice to become a less hilarious Morrissey, and there's a song performed with an 80's 2 THE MAX drum machine and little else, but beneath it all is still that creamy Jawbreaker-ish center the lot of us will spank it to ad infinitum. Tracks like "Violent Inside" and "If I Needed You There" simultaneously rekindle olde p0nx magick while pushing the band's boundaries, but the utterly skeletal brevity of "Drainage" and "I'm Always Tired" are what make me really drool over this. Clocking in a little under/over a minute each, the pair remind me of all those moments where I'd find a beautiful, gutwrenching little chunk of music plaguing my subconscious and later (usually much later) find it to be a 30 second, recorded-under-a-snowbank quality Guided By Voices song I'd previously thought nothing of. While "Drainage" brings the somber, bottom lip biting goodness with just a ragged acoustic guitar and a few piano plunks, it's "I'm Always Tired" that really, really gets me. I feel like I've written these lyrics a zillion times:
I’m always tired.
I’m always at least half asleep.
Blemish and state how I don’t feel great now.
I don’t hang out in her hair.
I don’t wonder if she cares.
I lay awake now, I entertain my plans
To one day miraculously be talkative and likable,
To wake up as someone else, someone I know is inside of me,
Just waiting to be put to use by something much more sharp than us.
They pry out every fucking piece and still they’re coming around again.
To close: Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired turned out to be a hugely satisfying release, especially considering how disappointed I was by it at first. This is a fucking awesome album, and a great addition to their catalog. I don't think it could stand alone as well as their self-titled by any means, but it's at least on par with that album's "compulsive listenability", as some rock critic dude probably said. I know that's not an original thought. I don't know if I could recommend you pay LP prices for 7" length album, but if flipping over the record every five minutes floats your salad, you couldn't do much better than this.
The sole complaint I have still floats around the "waaah it's too short" universe, but lettuce be specific: the "Video Killed The Radio Star" cover is over 2 minutes long. I realize the original is only about 45 seconds longer, but context is important here. While the band completely DID make the song their own (much like their awesome cover of "Midnight Service At The Mutter Museum"), and I totally applaud their unfuckgiveable attitude, maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to waste 1/6th of a 13 minute "album" on a cover of the worst song in the entire universe.
Oh, and while I can't embed this for some reason, totally give this a look.
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