joyride! - miracle question (2022)

San Francisco’s joyride!’s new LP “Miracle Question” has been a long time in the making. After releasing a new batch of songs nearly every year from their formation in 2010 until the release of their third LP “Half Moon Bay” in 2016, the band took five years before heading back to the studio. All of that extra time allowed them to build a catalog of songs to pick through for this recording, making for one of the band’s strongest collections of songs. In those five years, the changes in songwriter Jenna Marx’s life, including going to grad school and starting a career in school counseling, influenced a record that’s themes include; compassion, forgiveness, nostalgia, change, family systems, attachment styles, healthy relationships, running away, and staying put. Musically “Miracle Question” continues to channel the straight ahead melodic pop-punk of bands like P.S. Eliot and Superchunk while adding a few new tricks to their arsenal. The record finds joyride! striking a balance between short-fast pop-punk songs like “Flyover States” and “The Archivist” and mid-tempo indie-rock tinged numbers like “In The Afterglow” and “The Regulars.”