Youth seems to take forever when you’re young, but once it’s gone, it’s gone. We have the signposts, the artifacts, the memories, and the music that define a moment for us. Joyce Manor‘s Never Hungover Again is one of those canonical snapshots of youth–the parties at parents’ houses, the tattoos, and the occasional pangs of nostalgia that will only grow over the forthcoming years. It is the band’s definitive statement to date, a bittersweet account of growing out of youth across ten endlessly catchy songs. At just under 20 minutes, it’s compulsively replayable, especially in the summer months, and it’s acknowledged as one of the key punk records of the 2010s, a classic of the pop-punk genre that has more on its mind than the stereotypes of the genre.
Prior to Never Hungover Again, Joyce Manor were ascending on the strength of their debut, Of These Things I Will Soon Grow Tired EP, and their self-titled full-length. Blending the observational lyrics of Jawbreaker with the pop sensibilities of Weezer and the commitment to the economy of Guided by Voices, Joyce Manor instantly stood out among the other pop punk bands of the early 2010s. Songs like “How Tame Can I Be?”, “I’m Always Tired”, and “Drainage” sound like Robert Pollard making a pop-punk record, while “If I Needed You There” had that desperation of the best early Jawbreaker tracks. “Bride of Usher” is an earworm that points toward the relentless catchiness of their self-titled first release, which contains certified classics and live staples “Constant Headache” and “Beach Community”. It’s easy to imagine the lyrics to the former coming from Rivers Cuomo’s mouth, and the main riff to the latter could be an outtake from the Blue Album.
This momentum culminated in Joyce Manor recording Never Hungover Again and signing with Epitaph Records soon after. With a cover photo of bassist Matt Ebert and Hop Along lead singer France Quinlan smiling and its youthfully aspirational title, the record sells a set of carefree, celebratory songs, but it turns out to be much more. Similar to how Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy captures the Bay Area scene and Blake Schwarzenbach’s internal turmoil in carefully observed snapshots to deliver an emotional wallop along with the urge to pogo, Joyce Manor captured those moments of their lives in Torrance, California, 20 years after that landmark and 30 after the Replacements’ canonical and similarly-themed Let It Be. These albums could be seen as three different generations’ scene reports, records that mean the world to you if you are a certain age when they are released and easily identified as the That One Summer records of their eras.
In the press notes for Never Hungover Again, Johnson described the feeling of the record as “The loneliness when you’re surrounded by people and that lostness when everything you’ve wanted seems to be right in front of you.” A shadow of melancholy hangs over Never Hungover Again, the notion that youth isn’t eternal, that its pleasures fade for the young and are coveted as life marches on. It sounds like a summer record but reads like a fall record.
The opener, “Christmas Card”, finds the narrator trying to reckon with his fading feelings for someone. Shopworn territory, but everyone’s experience of this is a little different. Johnson’s comparison of how differently the couple sees things is a memorable turn of phrase, and the desperation he pours into the line “I don’t know what you tried to tell me” echoes the spent howls of Blake Schwarzenbach on early Jawbreaker classics like “Do You Still Hate Me?”. The song’s main hook also underscores the rawness of the feelings. With that, Joyce Manor start strong in supporting Johnson’s thesis for Never Hungover Again.
From there, “Falling in Love Again” delivers another left hook, a catchy bummer about the anxiety of trying again with someone new. Johnson can write about heartbreak as well as any of his peers, and the complexity of these feelings recalls Pinkerton‘s dicey honesty. There’s plenty good about this new love interest; she’s funny, has cool friends who treat her well, and she’s not hung up on money, but the narrator is still not sure if he can take the risk, and he finds himself reassuring her that he’s interested. The flatness in the line delivery on “I’m falling in love again” provides the answer
There are plenty of summer-romance-dies songs, but “End of the Summer” is filled with evocative images, and the music amplifies the bittersweet feeling of a summer fling running its course. From surprise at being invited over to the symbolism of a blacklight distorting the view, it’s a catchy, bittersweet lament.
In “Victoria”, the narrator is caught in the throes of anxiety over how things went with the titular love interest. It’s possible to hear a little Elvis Costello in the wiry energy and big chorus, but Johnson saves the best part for last, likening his anxiety to a screen door he tried bursting through but had to rehang.
The back half of Never Hungover Again flies by as a suite of punchy, agitated tracks that barely leave room for a breath. “Heart Tattoo” is deceptively brilliant in how it mixes humor and heartbreak. The narrator’s heart tattoo seems to be meant to be a decoy for his real one, as he repeatedly calls it “a real tattoo”. Other lines predictably poke fun at parental advice (“I know that it looks bad / But it’s the only one I have” and “What do you want me to say? / It’s never going away”), and the song’s relentless, high-energy hooks take root in the brain after just under two minutes. Then, “The Jerk”, “In the Army”, and “Catalina Fight Song” crash into each other before the comedown of “Heated Swimming Pool”. No big life lessons, just a momentary respite from the march toward adulthood.
Joyce Manor’s Never Hungover Again turned out to be a significant critical and commercial success for the band, peaking at 106 on the Billboard 200 and is seen as a critical release in the emo revival of the 2010s. After Jawbreaker’s Dear You and other records that blended emo and punk, those genre lines were increasingly blurry, and that was precisely the right canvas for Joyce Manor. AllMusic’s Tim Sendra christened it “an instant classic”, and Ian Cohen wrote a glowing review for Pitchfork, stating that Never Hungover Again is “the kind of album you can play three times in a row without any part wearing out its welcome”. Crediting the brevity alone would be a disservice to the meticulous construction of the songs. Each one contains twists and turns that fly by in two-minute bursts, keeping the listener eagerly anticipating the next hook.
As expected, and similar to countless other bands in their situation, Joyce Manor spent the next couple of releases growing and expanding their sound and, at times, challenging their core fanbase. Follow-up Cody was recorded with producer Rob Schnapf, who had also worked with Guided by Voices, Elliott Smith, X, and Saves the Day. Compared to Never Hungover Again, Cody is more polished, and at 24-four minutes, it is their longest record to date. Rather than a relentless pileup of riffs, songs on Cody have space to breathe and occasionally slow down. The lyrics are still stacked with Johnson’s trademark one-liners and gift for packing a two-minute song with evocative details that linger after the song. However, the initial fan response was muted, although critics remained positive.
“Fake I.D.” opens the record with a more polished sound, a funny bit about Kanye West, and ends with a gut-punch verse about a dead friend. It is a testament to Joyce Manor that this all hangs together so well. Elsewhere, Phoebe Bridgers joins them for the ballad “Do You Really Want to Not Get Better?”, and songs like “Over Before It Began”, “Angel in the Snow”, and “Last You Heard of Me” could have easily been bigger hits than they were. Cody is the sound of a band confident in the changes happening organically within the band.
Interestingly, as was the case when Jawbreaker released their more mature follow-up to a hallowed instant classic, fans were less enthusiastic about Cody songs at live shows at first. Similar to the warmer reconsideration given to Dear You a couple of years later, several of the Cody songs are now beloved setlist staples. From here, Million Dollars to Kill Me leaned even harder into cleaner pop and 40oz. to Fresno was a scrappy, short recapture of the sound that got them on the radar of pop-punk fans. Despite the mixed critical and commercial outcomes of these releases, Joyce Manor still draw on the road, playing larger and larger venues.
When you so expertly capture a snapshot of youth cresting and rolling back, the eventual need to move on to more adult concerns can be jarring at first for fans, especially if they aren’t ready to move on. Many emo and pop punk bands have seen fans struggle with the mature follow-up to a youth classic, but they come around as they grow up, too. Witness the turnaround on the Promise Ring’s final album, Wood/Water. Nostalgia lands best when we have moved on and are back for a visit, not pining for a return to earlier times. Never Hungover Again, like Let It Be and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy before it, is a timeless burst of youth on the verge of maturity. Ten years on, it still sounds urgent and endlessly replayable cranked up loud with the windows down, and it will likely be that way ten years from now.