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Motion City Soundtrack’s Tony Thaxton is the latest to ably take over the drummer’s stool. The band once again worked with Cody producer Rob Schnapf, a guy known for his work with Beck and Elliott Smith but also Guided By Voices, Joyce Manor’s predecessors in short, sweet guitar bangers that thrive in any fidelity. To Fresno presents a band just as indebted to Scottish power-pop greats Teenage Fanclub, who got their own nod from Joyce Manor on the 2020 rarities collection Songs From Northern Torrance. They’re starting to seem like the emo revival’s answer to Spoon: a hooky, straightforward rock band that can’t seem to miss, with a signature touch you can’t mistake no matter how much they tweak the details.ĭespite its Sublime-referencing title, 40 Oz. At his tamest, Johnson still howls his songs with grit and conviction, and his bandmates play even the most radio-ready tracks with an anxious vigor. But Joyce Manor do the “Green Album” sound so much better than Weezer ever did. In theory this should be a problem because Pinkerton rules whereas “The Green Album” is the sound of Rivers Cuomo hedging his bets, draining the personality out of his music, and ending up with a sterilized zombie version of Weezer. If Joyce Manor’s self-titled album was their admitted attempt at Pinkerton-style abrasion, a decade later they’ve settled into an extended “ Green Album” era, cranking out endless variations on well-crafted guitar-pop. In hindsight, it feels like a pretty clear progression, a process of refinement more than reinvention. And though some fans thought Cody leaned too hard into the post-grunge side of their sound - the latent Third Eye Blind and Everclear influence they picked up on KROQ alongside Green Day and blink-182 - it was just as much a step toward the Britpop and power-pop aesthetics that manifested more clearly on 2018’s Million Dollars To Kill Me. Upon signing to Epitaph they got back to crowd-pleasing with the artfully revved-up Never Hungover Again. They reacted to that record’s success with the scattershot and self-consciously challenging Of All The Things I Will Soon Grow Tired. Joyce Manor’s Tumblr-revered 2011 debut was Cali pop-punk crossbred with ripshit lo-fi indie rock, spiked with traces of the Smiths, the Thermals, and especially early Weezer. There have been minor evolutions in style and fidelity over the years, each change exhaustively litigated by the band’s fan base. Not that every Joyce Manor album has been exactly the same, or that their zealous supporters have always been pleased. It’s another stellar entry in a catalog that has become a model of satisfying consistency. To Fresno does not play like a makeshift collection of leftovers. Speaking to Uproxx more recently, Johnson said the immaculate single “Don’t Try” was “Frankensteined from four songs in the Joyce Manor graveyard.” But as that song suggests, 40 Oz. In an interview with Alternative Press last fall, months before it was officially announced, the Joyce Manor singer-songwriter and guitarist compared the creative process for his band’s new album to the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, explaining that it was mostly pieced together from scraps of old unfinished songs he had laying around. Barry Johnson is apparently MacGyver for power-pop songs.