Joyce Manor - I Used To Go To This Bar 

For seventh studio album ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’, Californian punk outfit Joyce Manor delve into an unfamiliar retrospection, one that switches rose-tinted glasses for profound realism. “There’s nothing special about the place,” goes its title track, an ode to an unremarkable neighbourhood watering hole, accompanied by a brilliantly despondent take on SoCal surfpunk. Resignation is cemented in the subtle country tinge of the tellingly titled ‘All My Friends Are So Depressed’, ‘I Know Where Mark Chen Lives’’ homage to old friends that never quite got what they deserved, and closing highlight ‘Grey Guitar’’s acceptance of permanently missing parts.

It’s a theme that could have easily seen the band tread heavier waters, yet in its 20-minute runtime ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ sees Joyce Manor at their most whimsical, driven by a sound that fittingly embodies a nostalgia for something that may have never actually existed. Scattered takes of pop, gruff-punk and sun-kissed melodies underpin these tales of despondency to cement a whole new style for a band near two decades in, a sound that Joyce Manor have yet to have presented but one that fits them perfectly, and a masterful progression of all that has come before. If all bands with such a tenure could create a record that simultaneously sounded so fresh but also so fundamentally themselves as ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’, we’d be a truly lucky lot.