There's such a beautiful little irony to the realization that the guy from Fun. is singing backup for the guy from Joyce Manor. The guy from Joyce Manor is Barry Johnson, who, since 2008, has specialized in finely observed and wistful little lyrical details, and who has crammed those details into songs that often clock in at under 90 seconds. Joyce Manor are a pop-punk band, at least in theory, but they've only really glancingly nodded at the "pop" side of that equation. They sing about relationships and sentimentality and being a completely lost young person, the way pop-punk bands do. But their songs are brief and headlong rushes -- LPs ending in under 20 minutes, songs that barely ever bother to repeat the chorus twice. And Johnson's voice is not exactly a melodic instrument. It's a strangulated blurt -- capable of conveying emotion but not really the sort of thing that can pound a hook home.
