Joyce Manor released “I Know Where Mark Chen Lives”, the opening track and new single from their new album, I Used To Go To This Bar, out 30th January.

Of the song, Barry Johnson says, “Mark Chen was a singer and songwriter for the bands Summer Vacation and Winter Break, which didn’t get quite as popular as they deserved to. I just love Mark’s songwriting and voice. Lyrically, the song was inspired by Chase and I hanging out, drinking and smoking weed and laughing about stuff, and we were talking about how when weed clubs first started, they’d give you a free dab and the budtender would do a dab with you. Dabs are insanely gnarly. I was cracking myself up imagining some 19-year-old girl that just did her third dab of the hour before getting robbed at gunpoint, because they’d always get robbed as cash businesses. That’s the imagery of the song: Those early days when weed was still not super fully legal. It was like the Wild West, a little bit. And yeah, that just gave me a chuckle because it’s really dark and brutal.”

I Used To Go To This Bar feels like a true culmination of everything Joyce Manor’s achieved thus far, further cementing their current legacy as California pop-punk royalty as well as a truly generational punk band at large. “Joyce Manor are a quintessential South Bay punk band,” Gurewitz says while talking about the band’s importance to the landscape as large. “But unlike their peers they’re writing timeless songs for the American Songbook. If Barry was a novelist, he’d be Ernest Hemingway. To me, they’re among the most important bands of the last two decades.” And the fresh burst of inspiration that fuels I Used To Go To This Bar proves that Joyce Manor are far from content to rest on such laurels, moving forward with their sound and style in a way that reminds you of how they got to this point in the first place.

This is pop? today’s song of the day is here for you.