Joyce Manor Stay Short and Sharp

“Maybe there’s some of that in there. Especially the title and stuff; it’s called Never Hungover Again but in part [refers to] no consequences ‘cause when I was 22 I could drink and party all the time and not feel it, I could just go on with my life. Now I really feel the consequences of doing stuff like that, and it’s not as cute – you’re not like a young kid living recklessly, you’re like an adult living recklessly, and there’s an element of that in the title and in the record.

"you’re not like a young kid living recklessly, you’re like an adult living recklessly"

“As far as signing to Epitaph, I don’t think that’s a particularly grown-up move – I didn’t like quit the band and become a graphic designer,” Johnson laughs. “We’re still playin’ in our band. But I guess the band has grown up a bit doing stuff we wouldn’t normally do. It’s cool. There’s an element of that. I feel weird to say that this is our grown-up record; it’s still short, pop punk songs, you know. It’s not like we added a string section and eight-minute epics or anything; it’s still like two dumb kids jerkin’ around.”

With Never Hungover Again clocking in at 19 minutes, a whole six minutes longer than second album Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired, Johnson explains they’re completely comfortable with the short format, even if it bothers some.

“Some people kind of get it and they’re just like, ‘Yeah it’s great – I like it.’ And some people are deeply insulted that you would call that a record or that you would not, quote/unquote, ‘finish the songs’. I just don’t know what to say; that’s just how I like the songs to be, I think they’re fine that way. We actually tried to work on this record to make the songs longer, like we added parts.

“I feel like there’s a certain level of anxiety that causes the songs to be short. It’s like once you get going you just want to get out of there and call it done. But with our old records, people have written us emails like, ‘Hey, don’t have your songs be so short.’ Wow... With this one I think maybe it’s not that big of a deal if people don’t like the record – you should just have fun, follow your gut, do what you think is right.”

Having spent some time touring Australia with The Smith Street Band, Johnson is hell-keen to bring Joyce Manor back Down Under.

“We are going to Europe in November and that’s as far in the future as we’ve thought so far, but number one on the list after that is to get back to Australia. I don’t care if we get offered insane supports here in the US, I wanna get back to Australia so bad.”