Photo by Dan Monick

Joyce Manor certainly know how to hit that punked up power-pop sweet spot perfectly and their softer jangles are nothing to get depressed about either contrary to title, but when Torrance’s finest tag back into shouting out their inner aggressions, look out. “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives”, the latest single from the band’s new album, I Used To Go To This Bar, is one part lore (a homage to Barry Johnson’s wild nights out with bud and vocalist for unheralded DIY emo bands like Summer Vacation and Winter Break, Mark Chen) one part dark fable (it imagines a teenage girl doing her first dab at the cash-only weed bars they’d frequent, right before getting held up at gunpoint,) and completely Joyce Manor in letting themselves running off the tracks with the impulse of a heart attack. “And I’ll just stay out of the way!,” he sings. But why would you when the head-on collision gives you this much life?

Directed by: Jason Link & Rowan Daly

Joyce Manor’s I Used To Go To This Bar will be released January 30th on Epitaph Records.