In 2014, Joyce Manor released a truly amazing pop-punk record called Never Hungover Again, which positioned the Torrance, California foursome as kin to pop-punk greats like Blink-182, Weezer, and Jawbreaker. Like those groups, they share the same penchant for suburban ennui, self-indulgent melancholy (“I hate the way I feel like dying when I’m alone”), and loud anthems cherished by quiet people.
But for their fourth record, Cody, Joyce Manor decided to change their process a bit and take a few risks. They replaced drummer Kurt Walcher with Jeff Enzor and teamed up with producer Rob Schnapf, who has worked with Elliott Smith, Guided by Voices, and Saves the Day. They holed up with Schnapf for two months and made a tight, complex record that still manages to cram 10 songs into about 25 minutes. A telling detail is frontman Barry Johnson’s admission that Cody is influenced by Dear Nora, a Portland indiepop project led by Katy Davidson. Though it seems safe to say that very few Joyce Manor fans listen to Dear Nora (maybe they heard the name in a Girlpool song), the former’s newfound affinity for the gentle band is not that much of a surprise: at Cody’s core is a deeper degree of tenderness than they have displayed before.
Joyce Manor’s songs follow a pattern of communicating through brief emotional blasts. In every two-minute story, the stakes are high, and this pushes each track to discover some sort of clarity by the conclusion. On Cody, these realizations are rarely happy, and Joyce Manor ask their fans to follow them to a darker place than before. Take the would-be epiphany at the end of “Last You Heard of Me”: “And in the moment I see everything/Start to finish sad defeat/Shivering lying naked next to you/And that’s the last you heard of me.” Even opener “Fake I.D.,” which comes off as the silliest song on the record with its “What do you think about Kanye West?” line ends on the sobering final note, “Because my friend Brandon died/And I feel sad/I miss him he was rad.” The reference to the late drummer of Wyoming’s Teenage Bottlerocket is also a plea to look past the surface and see the pain coursing beneath everyday existence. “Fake I.D.” itself shows off the lessons learned from their time with Schnapf—it’s abrasive, swaggering pop that sounds modern rock radio-ready but not far from Joyce Manor’s first three records.
But all sort of bands can work with that Big Studio Money and emerge with an excessive mess. Joyce Manor know themselves, they know their audience, and they know better than to overdo the production. If anything, they’ve slowed down and pulled back. For the first time, a Joyce Manor album includes an acoustic track and a song over four minutes. The former is a quick duet about addiction between Johnson and Phoebe Bridgers called “Do You Really Want to Not Get Better?” On the opposite end of the spectrum, “Stairs” thumps along patiently as Johnson gripes, “Yeah, I’m 26 and I still live with my parents/Oh I can’t do laundry/Christ I can’t do dishes.” Johnson wrote those words when he was 19 but came to re-appreciate them while on an acoustic tour with Hop Along’s Francis Quinlan (whose mug appears on the cover of Never Hungover Again). Lyrically, the revamped track verges into creepy territory, as its narrator becomes overcome with protective paranoia for his love: “You are like a magnet for all evil ’cause there is so much good inside you.”
Cody finds a more grown-up Joyce Manor, but every track contains enough blunt expressions of existential despair to tie them to their angsty past. “I feel so old today,” Johnson declares on “Eighteen,” and then immediately after on “Angel in the Snow” he muses, “How come nothing amazes me?” These might sound annoying, but buoyed by the immediacy of their music, they simply feel honest. When you watch videos of Joyce Manor concerts, it’s easy to see that the audiences connects with the band, as if they’ve never had the words to express what they are feeling. Those same people will not be disappointed with Cody; there’s a lot of cathartic emotion to revel in. Joyce Manor have proven that they are ready and willing to grow, but they’re still open to saying, “this song is a mess but so am I.”
