Joyce Manor share new single ‘I Know Where Mark Chen Lives’
Joyce Manor by Dan Monick
Joyce Manor release ‘I Know Where Mark Chen Lives’, the opening track and new single from their anticipated new album, I Used To Go To This Bar, out 30th January via Epitaph Records. The explosive track arrives with a black and white performance video directed by Jason Link and Rowan Daly.
Of the song, Barry Johnson says, “Mark Chen was a singer and songwriter for the bands Summer Vacation and Winter Break, which didn't get quite as popular as they deserved to. I just love Mark's songwriting and voice. Lyrically, the song was inspired by Chase and I hanging out, drinking and smoking weed and laughing about stuff, and we were talking about how when weed clubs first started, they’d give you a free dab and the budtender would do a dab with you. Dabs are insanely gnarly. I was cracking myself up imagining some 19-year-old girl that just did her third dab of the hour before getting robbed at gunpoint, because they’d always get robbed as cash businesses. That's the imagery of the song: Those early days when weed was still not super fully legal. It was like the Wild West, a little bit. And yeah, that just gave me a chuckle because it's really dark and brutal.”
I Used To Go To This Bar, produced by SoCal punk legend Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion, Epitaph Records CEO), finds the epochal band operating at the top of their game. The Torrance, CA trio of Barry Johnson, Chase Knobbe, and Matt Ebert continue to find rich new veins to tap in their short-and-sweet songcraft without losing an ounce of bite that gained them such repute in the first place. I Used To Go To This Bar further situates Joyce Manor in the lineage of their influences and inspirations. Think AFI’s rapid-fire burn, Weezer’s indelible power-pop acumen, and the dusky emotionalism of The Smiths while further establishing them as leading lights in the current rock landscape.
Watch the ‘I Know Where Mark Chen Lives’ video
I Used To Go To This Bar follows the release of 2023’s 40 oz. to Fresno, a record that the New York Times praised as “a relentlessly tuneful 17-minute collection of all-killer, no-filler power-pop”, and Pitchfork called “a loving, uncynical refinement of the band’s best.” The band has been staying busy since its release, touring and collaborating with Weezer, making their television debut on Everybody's Live with John Mulaney with their classic “Constant Headache”, a song that was also featured in Season 3 of FX’s The Bear, and celebrating the 10th anniversary of Never Hungover Again, which Stereogum recently said “masterfully achieves what most artists spend their lives trying to accomplish.”
Track List:
1. I Know Where Mark Chen Lives
2. Falling Into It
3. All My Friends Are So Depressed
4. Well, Whatever It Was
5. I Used To Go To This Bar
6. After All You Put Me Through
7. The Opossum
8. Well, Don’t It Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before?
9. Grey Guitar
More About I Used To Go To This Bar
Work on the record began in early 2023, with a creative dream team assembled after Johnson brought an early mix of first single ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed’ to Bad Religion legend and Epitaph owner Brett Gurewitz. “I’ve been extremely proud of Joyce Manor since we signed them, and Barry and I have always had an excellent working relationship together,” Gurewitz says while discussing how he eventually took on the role of I Used To Go To This Bar’s producer. “I loved the song, but I could hear it done in a totally different way. He said, ‘Well, would you ever consider producing a single for us?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, I would love to.’”
“Working with Brett was amazing,” Johnson beams. “When it comes to our musical DNA, he’s one of the architects of everything we grew up on. Having him guide our record helped us make something that we could put next to those classic records that shaped us,” Johnson adds. “I really feel like we were behind the wheel, and I'm really proud of it.” “He likes to keep the excitement up,” Knobbe adds, “and he's amazing at coaching performances and knowing what not to sweat. Brett legitimised all our early influences in a way that gave us a lot of confidence to execute what we were going for.” “When you're a musician in the studio, you want to be creative,” Gurewitz explains while discussing his immediacy-first production approach that resulted in the nonstop fireballs on I Used To Go To This Bar. “You don't want to wait around and feel frustration because people are taking a long time to plug something in. I always try to work fast and keep things creative and fun.”
I Used To Go To This Bar feels like a true culmination of everything Joyce Manor’s achieved thus far, further cementing their current legacy as California pop-punk royalty as well as a truly generational punk band at large. “Joyce Manor are a quintessential South Bay punk band,” Gurewitz says while talking about the band’s importance to the landscape as large. “But unlike their peers they're writing timeless songs for the American Songbook. If Barry was a novelist, he'd be Ernest Hemingway. To me, they’re among the most important bands of the last two decades.” And the fresh burst of inspiration that fuels I Used To Go To This Bar proves that Joyce Manor are far from content to rest on such laurels, moving forward with their sound and style in a way that reminds you of how they got to this point in the first place.
I Used To Go To This Bar retains the band’s penchant for punchy hooks while sounding fuller, more in-your-face, and all-around bigger than ever, with an all-star crew of collaborators along for this wild ride. Along with mixing pro Tony Hoffer (M83, Beck), behind-the-boards legend Tom Lord-Alge lent his Enema of the State engineer magic to several I Used To Go To This Bar cuts, including the first single ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed.’ The album also features a rotating cast of drummers, including touring drummer Jared Shavelson, Social Distortion’s David Hildago, Jr., and Joey Waronker - the latter of whom is currently hitting the skins for Oasis’ reunion tour. “Over the last 16 years, it’s very much felt like the three of us have this chemistry of playing music together,” Ebert explains, “and we have this pattern of drummers not staying around for too long. It made sense to forge forward as the three of us and figure out the drummer situation as we go.”
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