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Never Hungover Again

Never Hungover Again is the third studio album by American rock band Joyce Manor, released on July 22, 2014 through Epitaph Records. Never Hungover Again explores topics like love and summertime. It contains both bracingly fast and mid-tempo punk songs, recorded live across two weeks at a Hollywood studio with producer Joe Reinhart. The album's run time clocks in at only nineteen minutes long. The band aimed for brevity, and most of the songs on the album are under two minutes.

Never Hungover Again became the band's first album to reach the Billboard 200, where it peaked at 106. Music critics embraced the album, cementing the band's place as one of the top pop-punk bands of the 2010s; they were credited with spearheading a revival of emo music alongside acts like Title Fight and Tigers Jaw. The band played shows in support of the album with Brand New, as well as their first-ever headlining slots alongside Toys That Kill, Mitski, and Modern Baseball.

Background

After diving deeper into on the eccentric sophomore release Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (2012), Joyce Manor opted to take a back-to-basics approach with Never Hungover Again. Frontman Barry Johnson admitted that he developed a complex about being in a pop-punk band and had intentionally tried to move beyond those trappings on Of All Things.

Never Hungover Again marked a moment where the interplay between frontman Barry Johnson and guitarist Chase Knobbe began to take shape. In an interview, Johnson explained that Knobbe was dating a person in Santa Cruz who was in college; "While she was in school all day, he would just smoke weed and play guitar. And he got way better at guitar by doing that," he said. The band found the new material refreshing: "Like once we wrote “The Jerk” and “Falling in Love Again,” it felt more rich and like something different that we hadn’t done yet," Johnson later said. Johnston took an oblique approach to his lyricism, allowing songs to develop line-by-line. He would write a lyric, and build upon them gradually with no set theme in mind. Many of the songs were written over a period of years. The group aimed for a higher quality output on the album after touring songs for years from earlier efforts they felt tired of.

Recording and production

The album was recorded over two weeks in November 2013 at the Lair in Hollywood, an all-analog facility. It was produced by Joe Reinhart of Algernon Cadwallader. Much of the album was recorded live and characterized by drunkenness: "For a lot of it, we were pretty wasted. Four of the takes we got in a row, while we were very drunk and high." The band wanted to add more harmonies to songs but ran out of time; "We barely had enough time to finish basic tracking," Johnson confessed. The band shelved one track from the album, "Secret Sisters", but it resurfaced on 2022's 40 oz. to Fresno, where the band felt it fit better.

The often jangly guitar work on Hungover was frequently likened to the Smiths' Johnny Marr; the band also noted Guided by Voices as an influence. Entertainment Weekly's Miles Raymer observed that "Never Hungover Again combines the earnestly awkward adolescent squawk of emo foundation-layers Cap'n Jazz with Cali pop-punk’s buzzsaw hooks." After recording the album, the band signed to fabled punk imprint Epitaph Records. Epitaph financed the album's mixing process, which was conducted by Tony Hoffer, known for his work with M83 and Phoenix. The cover art for the album depicts bassist Matt Ebert drunkenly embracing Hop Along's Frances Quinlan. "It looks like two people partying, but there’s nothing dangerous or sexy about it," Ebert joked. Never Hungover Again first debuted as a stream on NPR on July 14, 2014.

Critical reception

Upon its release, Never Hungover Again received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from critics, the album received an average score of 82, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 13 reviews. The A.V. Club critic David Anthony wrote that the album "isn’t a complete overhaul of the band’s sound, but with all the gentle twists on those charms, it ends up serving as a re-introduction." AllMusic's Tim Sendra stated: "Joyce Manor make 20 minutes feel way more epic than the running time might promise, and Never Hungover Again ends up as the kind of record that feels like an instant classic." Ian Cohen of Pitchfork thought: "Once you stop trying to label what should be a hook and focus on what is, the ingenuity of each song’s design and the ear-turning nature of every maneuver speaks to Never Hungover Again's inexhaustible quality, the kind of album you can play three times in a row without any part wearing out its welcome."

NPR's Lars Gotrich viewed it a "confident, focused record," while PopMatters' Tanner Smith found "it has almost peerless consistency in quality [...] The band’s concision is evidenced not only in each song’s respective brevity, but through the rigid structures and arrangements, balancing mathematical control and cathartic release." Maura Johnson from The Boston Globe observed "The resentful “In the Army Now” and determined “Heart Tattoo” clip along thanks to sprightly, melodic bass lines from Matt Ebert and Kurt Walcher’s clockwork drumming." Stereogum's Danielle Chelosky called it their best album, opining: "Never Hungover Again finds the band at their most emotive and compelling — an incisive and intoxicating snapshot of what it means to be alive."