Prelude Press
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Joyce Manor have released “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 January 30th 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.
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.”