on Propeller Sound Recordings
See the video for first single, “Mercy Mild,” here
First U.S. tour dates in 15 years also announced
Pop-punk pioneers Too Much Joy have released “Mercy Mild” the first official single from their forthcoming album All These Fucking Feelings, due October 21 via Propeller Sound Recordings. The new album follows the band’s unexpected and highly acclaimed 2020 reunion album Mistakes Were Made.
A short run of live dates, entitled the Mistakes Will Be Made Tour, will the see the band perform in Washington DC at Jammin Java on 10/27; New York City at the Mercury Lounge on 10/30; and Boston at Sonia on 11/1.
Too Much Joy are Jay Blumenfield (guitar/vocals), Tim Quirk (vocals), Sandy Smallens (bass/vocals), Tommy Vinton (drums), William Wittman (guitar/bass/vocals).
“If I knew how to avoid these fucking feelings / then I’d be a very different kind of man,” runs the first line of the title track. Lucky for us the band isn’t made up of the kind of men who can manage that trick.
Instead, on this, the band’s seventh full-length LP, Too Much Joy holds true to what it’s always done, in the 1980s, 1990s, and off and on in the years in-between, as its members worked real jobs and formed families and grew from punkish, prankish suburban dreamers to adults who have indisputably seen some shit.
Through it all, no matter what the world throws at them, Too Much Joy still mines the confusion, anxiety, rage, and joy that all of us feel. Then, through the messy process of band democracy, transmutes it into rock and roll of uncommon passion, power, and insight.
In contrast to the apocalyptic Mistakes Were Made, All These Fucking Feelings often feels celebratory, in a melancholy sort of way, with Quirk’s unsentimental lyrics cheering on the awkward weirdos who didn’t peak too early (“Walken Dancing”), attesting to the power of collective noise-making (“We Yell at 8”), and toasting how acts of creation and love briefly brighten up an indifferent universe (“Mercy Mild,” “Slightly Beautiful,” “Old Friends Make Me Sad”).
On the climactic track “Theme Song” from 1991’s Cereal Killers album, Quirk monologued a fantasy about the band coming to the listener’s houses to crash and drink after a show, sounding as excited at the possibility as any diehard fan. In 2022, standout cuts “What Pricks We Were” and “Our History in Hugs” take that intimate identification even further. Both of those songs were commissioned by fans crowd-funding the album, to honor a friend or loved one. Quirk drew the lyrics from their responses to a questionnaire, searching for the resonant and universal. Of “What Pricks We Were,” Quirk says. “Those were just a few of the words he used to describe how he and the buddy he wanted to commemorate used to spend their nights driving New England highways aimlessly. That sounded like the title to a song Too Much Joy would write, as well as an apt description of my feelings whenever I’m reminiscing about our past.”
It’s no surprise that fans’ lives inspire great Too Much Joy songs, as Too Much Joy has never pretended to live a baller rock life, or that burning out is sexy, or that they were more than what they are: friends for life who like their rock loud, melodic, and expressing the real things people actually feel.
All These Fucking Feelings track listing:
1. We Yell at 8
2. What Pricks We Were
3. Our History in Hugs
4. Fortune Telling’s Easy
5. Minister of Loneliness
6. Fucking Feelings
7. Normal Never Was
8. The Call of the Wild
9. I Met a Ghost
10. Mercy Mild
11. Old Friends Make Me Sad
12. Walken Dancing
13. Slightly Beautiful
Too Much Joy tour dates:
10/27 – Jammin Java – Washington DC
10/30 – Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
11/1 – Sonia – Boston, MA