Joyce Manor knows how to get a crowd rowdy, and their stop at The Queen on their current tour was no exception. With an awesome set of openers with “Glitterer” and “FFO: Chillin” it’s always a good night of punk music at The Queen. Joyce Manor had recently released their new album “I Use to Go to This Bar” at the end of January of this year, and are currently on a sporadic run of show dates. From playing multiple warped tour dates alongside of their additional dates not associated with festivals, they have a hefty tour schedule for this year. If you are unfamiliar with Joyce Manor, here are my personal recommendations of songs from each album to get into them; Comfortable Clothes: Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (2012), Leather Jacket: S/T (2013), Catalina Fight Song: Never Hungover Again (2014), Fake ID: Cody (2016), Big Lie: Million Dollars to Kill Me (2018), Five Beer Plan: Songs From Northern Torrance (2020), NBSTA: 40 Oz. to Fresno (2022), and Well, Whatever it was: I Used to Go to This Bar (2026).
Joyce Manor’s Discography is impressive and vast in what it offers audiences, oftentimes it's a release, a safe space to scream, be loud, be angsty, and to be very punk. The crowd at The Queen was in love with the set they played. Crowd surfing and moshing basically the second they started playing. Joyce Manor played many of their hits such as “I Used to Go To This Bar”, “Falling in love again”, “All My Friends are so Depressed”, “Last You Heard of me” and opened their set with “I Know where Mark Chen Lives”. Arguably their most screamable songs “Constant Headache” and “Catalina Fight Song” had people going absolutely insane. I can handle a lot of mosh pit action and even I was fighting to stay standing. With everyone screaming the second verse of constant headache with vocalist Barry Johnson giving us the mic to sing it at the top of our lungs. As well as to scream out some misheard lyrics of the beginning of “Catalina Fight Song,” which everyone got a laugh out of.
After closing their set and returning for an encore, it was so incredibly refreshing to see a band so down to earth. They came back out, and were taking audience requests, and in true punk fashion, being straight up about not being able to play through some of their older material. It was just fun to be able to interact with a band like that, and I appreciated the raw and unpolished encore, I thought it helped to make that particular show at The Queen special, as I had seen them prior at warped tour DC. With pits opening up, heavy moshing, many many rounds of crowdsurfing, and even people getting on their fellow moshers back for piggyback rides through the pit. If you have an opportunity to go see Joyce Manor on this current tour, I HIGHLY recommend, but be ready to mosh, get rowdy, and scream at the top of your lungs.
- Alexis Baldwin
