REVIEW: Joyce Manor - I Used To Go To This Bar

JOYCE MANOR has always thrived on compression; not just short songs, but compressed emotions and ideas, whole messy inner lives flattened into something you can shout along to in under two minutes. I Used To Go To This Bar leans fully into that instinct, arriving as another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it record that still feels considered, self-aware, and quietly confident in what the band does best. Clocking in at nine tracks with not a single one crossing the three-minute mark, the album continues a trajectory that JOYCE MANOR has been refining for well over a decade. There’s no grand stylistic pivots here, no late-career attempts at reinvention.

Opener I Know Where Mark Chen Lives sets the tone immediately, barrelling in with stiff, no-nonsense urgency. There’s something in its momentum that recalls the pop-punk/emo sound of the early 2000s, not unlike the kinetic rush of FALL OUT BOY’s Take This To Your Grave, though JOYCE MANOR brings a little more abrasion and far less theatricality. It’s a door-kicker of a track, designed to grab you by the collar and drag you into the record without ceremony.

All My Friends Are So Depressed is a perfect example of the precise balancing act happening in this album. Lyrically, it’s bleak, brushing up against lines that are uncomfortable in their bluntness. Musically, though, it’s almost buoyant, driven by a melody that feels oddly warm and danceable. The irony is wholly intentional, dressing up despair as something you can sing along to with your arm around a friend’s shoulder. It’s one of the album’s most relatable moments, capturing the strange coexistence of dark humour, resignation, and genuine concern that runs through so much of our everyday life.

The title track stands out as it feels especially open and direct, with a communal quality that suggests JOYCE MANOR are still very much writing with live rooms in mind. There’s a sense of warm but vaguely somber nostalgia in this track, making it sound like the perfect addition to a coming-of-age movie soundtrack. Elsewhere, the band allow themselves small tonal shifts without ever breaking the record’s overall cohesion. After All You Put Me Through carries a slightly dreamy quality, its softer edges offering a brief exhale amid the rest of the record. The Opossum flirts with a more rootsy feel despite its velocity, while Well, Don’t It Seem Like You’ve Been Here Before? leans into repetition and routine as thematic material, reinforcing the album’s sense of weary familiarity.

By the time closer Grey Guitar rolls around, the album is already gone, leaving behind a familiar mix of catharsis, fatigue, and the nagging urge to hit play again. If there’s a challenge with this album, it’s that the tracks aren’t overtly shocking or dramatic, so individual moments don’t always leap out immediately. A couple of the songs may blur together on first pass, especially with their short lengths, though one could argue that this is a record specifically designed to be taken as a whole over and over again, with its impact accumulating through repetition, not spectacle.

Despite this, I Used To Go To This Bar might be one of JOYCE MANOR’s catchiest releases. The songs are short, straightforward, and often deceptively simple, but they’re built to linger. This isn’t music interested in complexity for its own sake; there’s no need for sprawling arrangements or layers upon layers of instrumentation when the core ideas land this cleanly. Sometimes two minutes and a strong hook are more than enough. 

Score: 7/10

I Used To Go To This Bar will be released on January 30th 2026 via Epitaph Records.

Words: Zuzanna Pazola

Photos: Dan Monick