Day 172: Playlist Music – Joyce Manor’s “Constant Headache”

by Tom Noonan

Don’t listen to anything else, listen to this, it’s that good, trust me, I put it first for a reason.

It might not have original subject matter (it’s about a one night stand), but Joyce Manor’s “Constant Headache” is a showcase of the grimy, sharp-elbowed realism punk can collide into when it’s done right.  “But you were drunker than high school, self-conscious and sweet/I never ever felt so cool disguised in your sheets”.  It’s a song written like the final chapter of a novel, bursting at the seams with subtext so thick it’d swallow you up if only the song’s tide wasn’t relentlessly pulling you out to sea.

Not that any of that matters, really.  Either way, you’re going to drown.