Joyce Manor played Royale – 12/9
Torrance, CA’s finest celebrated ten years of fan-favorite Never Hungover Again with support from Algernon Cadwallader and The Ergs! at Royale.
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Joyce Manor are nothing if not masters of brevity. Having yet to crack the 25-minute-mark on a single one of their six LPs, the band specialize in bite-sized tunes that are both affecting and ultra-catchy. It’s power-pop-punk by way of hardcore efficiency. Naturally, that means they can play a hell of a lot of songs during a single headlining set, which makes the notion of Joyce Manor joining in on the full-album anniversary tour trend just a little bit funny on its face. After all, if they pulled a little inspiration from Bob Pollard, they could cover the whole discography most every night.
Still, this winter’s short run of dates marking a decade of their third record Never Hungover Again signaled something meaningful for the band’s dedicated fanbase. Most of these songs are in the rotation on a given night anyway, but hearing them in sequence (complete with a giant banner of the iconic cover art hanging behind the band) gave their generally-agreed-upon best record its due for its tenth birthday.
Frontman Barry Johnson referred to it as his personal favorite, and he and the band – guitarist Chase Knobble and bassist Matt Ebert plus touring members Neil Berthier on acoustic and Jared Shavelson on drums – looked to be having a blast with the songs on stage. I might personally mount a defense of Cody or the band’s self-titled as their high water mark, but Hungover is as fine a choice as any, and hearing them rip through the whole thing (all 19 minutes of it) for a capacity crowd shouting every lyric at the Royale was a treat.
They had to joke that the night was over at the close of “Heated Swimming Pool,” of course, but the band had nearly 20 more songs up its sleeve for the remainder of the night which the crowd ate up with undiminished pogoing, crowd-surfing enthusiasm. Deep cuts and crowdpleasers like the monster “Constant Headache” kept the bodies churning, proving there is truly never a low-energy segment of a Joyce Manor show – even when they’re breaking out a Murder City Devils cover.
Opening up the night was a short and sweet set by Jersey pop-punk legends The Ergs! – whose influence is certainly felt in the JM catalog – and reunited math-y midwest emo purveyors Algernon Cadwallader. The PA crew’s intricate-yet-shoutable compositions clearly had plenty of overlapping fans in room, and given that they sold out the Royale on their own back in 2022, probably indicated this bill could’ve taken over a much bigger space. For those that made it in though, I can’t imagine there were any complaints about keeping things relatively intimate.
Scroll for a gallery of all three bands below.
