I’ve been listening to Joyer for years now. Sun Into Flies was the first record of theirs that caught my ear; a scrappy, searching album that revealed just how much potential the Sullivan brothers were working with. Since then, Joyer has carved out a distinct corner of indie rock through wiry guitar interplay, diaristic writing, and an emotional clarity that feels both soft-edged and precise. They’ve always had a gift for atmosphere, but what stands out today is how far they’ve come, production-wise and sonically, without losing the rough-hewn intimacy that defined their early work.
Joyer’s latest LP, On the Other End of the Line…, feels like the most fully realized version of their songwriting to date. Across ten tightly shaped tracks, Nick and Shane Sullivan stretch the emotional and sonic boundaries of their project, using distance — geographic, emotional, and creative — as both subject matter and structural spine. It’s an album built on movement, restlessness, and the strange clarity that comes from being far from the people and places you love.
Since releasing Night Songs in 2024, the brothers have uprooted their lives: Nick left Brooklyn for Philadelphia, while Shane abandoned a lonely stretch in Boston for a return to New York. Between moves, they toured relentlessly with bands who pushed them into new creative territory — and those shifts don’t sit in the background; they’re woven into the bones of the record.
Their decision to record in Chicago with Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp proves pivotal. Stoehr sharpens Joyer’s sound without sanding down its scruff. The guitars feel denser and more intentional; the harmonies warmer; the drum patterns more unpredictable; and the arrangements move with a confidence that wasn’t as fully present on earlier releases. I’d even go so far as to say there’s an understated boldness in how this crop of songs lean into spindly, chiming interplay — somewhere in the orbit of Slow Pulp and Horsegirl, with flashes of the nervy brightness you might hear in LVL UP or even early Alex G.
Opener “I Know Your Secret” channels the disorienting dreams Nick had while sleeping in Shane’s childhood bedroom, turning familiar space into something ghosted with estrangement. The muted vocals and compressed guitars hang in a static fog, mirroring the uneasy tone of the title.
“Cure,” the record’s namesake track, reframes fleeting encounters with strangers as unexpected lifelines. Its blend of staccato plucks and smooth, lilting phrases gives the song a restless forward pull, and the warm, analogue production nods subtly to ’70s singer-songwriter textures. On both “Cure” and “Glare of the Beer Can,” a gentle, open-sky shimmer cuts through the mix — a melodic clarity reminiscent of The Beths, but dustier and more lived-in.
Meanwhile, “Favorite” and “Test” flare with a volatile urgency, snapping tight before expanding outward — an elasticity that mirrors the album cover’s blurred, in-motion textures. (The “Favorite” visualizer, all haze and static, reinforces the album’s core tension between clarity and distortion.)
Elsewhere, “Something to Prove” and “Tell Me” sit with the emotional contradictions of life on tour: the desire to create endlessly, the ache for home, and the craving for any reliable version of stability.
By the time the album reaches the first lines of its final song — “I give up and I try / But I know I’ll be alright” — it’s clear that this LP captures Joyer at their most vulnerable, seasoned, and assured. They peel back the veil just enough to reveal the pulse beneath the noise, trusting that the honesty will land.
It does. And more than that: the album feels like a hinge point, the moment a band locks into a deeper version of itself.
Written by Krystal Camilla
