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Joyer
words : Gracelyn Barton
Shane: I'm Shane Sullivan and play mostly guitar and sing in Joyer.
Nick: I'm Nick Sullivan. I do a little bit of everything in Joyer, but mostly guitar and singing as well.
Gracelyn: Do you perform as a two-piece?
Shane: No, we're usually a four-piece. Our band kind of rotates around depending on who's around. We've had kind of a consistent lineup for the past few months. I'm up in Boston and Nick's in New York, so I usually just see who is able to travel between cities. Right now it's great because we're equally split, our bass player Jake Miller is in the Brooklyn area with Nick and our drummer Mijael Maratue is up here in Boston. It's nice, we get comfortable having him when we go on the long drive.
Gracelyn: I know I was going to ask about that – having one person living in a different state and then having to go back and forth
Shane: Yeah, it's not as crazy as it sounds. I feel like maybe we've just gotten used to it by now, but I don't know, we make it work.
Nick: I was going to say it's more helpful because we're brothers. Our mom lives in New Jersey so Shane comes down for family things a lot anyway. If we weren't brothers, it would probably be a little bit harder. But yeah, a lot of times things work out. We're like oh we'll be together anyways
Shane: We see each other a good amount so we're going to be together. We'll make sure to set aside some time to work on some new music and stuff like that.
Gracelyn: I think it's really cool that you guys are brothers. How far are you guys apart?
Nick: Three
Gracelyn: It's funny because you guys could be twins. You guys are so similar
Shane: A lot of people say that
Gracelyn: Does that make it easier or harder for your process to have your brother?
Nick: Think it's easier. I could see how it could be harder, but we're both kind of non-combative people. So if I was collaborating with someone who I didn't grow up with my entire life, I feel like I would probably make a lot more concessions or just go along with what the other person would say. But I guess it goes both ways. So I'm able to kind of be comfortable, pushing back on some things. Then at the same time, since we are brothers, we have a lot of the same ideas and inspirations. Because of that, it also makes it so I feel like we fight even less just because we kind of know where we're coming from and things like that.
Shane: Yeah, it's easier to be honest and not worry about hurting each other's feelings, I guess.
Gracelyn:Gracelyn: Totally. I've read that you guys are super into nineties music. Do you guys ever have some of your favorite bands from that time?
Shane: There's a couple of really cool Boston nineties bands like Swirlies. That's one of our favorites.
Nick: I feel like Polvo was a big one, and there's this really cool band called Velocity Girl we've both been getting really into. Yeah, they're more of a power pop-py, but they're really sick.
Gracelyn: So you guys are in Boston and New York. What is, I guess, kind of the general East Coast scene like?
Shane: It's super nice because everything in the Northeast is super close together. It's easy to hit a bunch of different cities in a short amount of time and not have to drive super long distances. That's something that I feel I only started realizing recently. Now that we've been kind of touring farther away, it's just like, “Wow, the rest of the country is not like that at all”-you're going to drive like six, seven, 8 hours just to get to the next city.
Gracelyn: Especially for me living on the West Coast. When you say you're from different states, I'm like, God, it takes me 6 hours to get to the next state over.
Shane: I Know! It's amazing that Nick and I live three or four states apart, but it's only a four-hour drive to get to each other. That makes it cool and easy to be able to dip into kind of different scenes. But also, I feel like scenes kind of just exist in multiple cities just because they're so close together. I mean, we obviously play in Boston and New York a lot because that's where we live; we play in Philly a lot too, because that's really close to New York. It's not too far of a drive for us to get there. It's nice in that it makes it easy to meet and play with a lot of different bands.
“So I'm really lucky to be based on the East Coast.”
Nick: It's weird too, just because we've known a lot of these bands for a long time and we kind of just perceive it like, yeah, that's my friend or whatever. But then we went out to tour in the Midwest and people were like, "Do you know this band or this band?" It's hard to kind of gauge how big this kind of scene is. It’s really cool that the East Coast has the capability to - even though some of them live in Connecticut, to keep in touch or we have a lot of friends in Vermont and stuff. We kind of lucked out being from around here. But I guess another thing about all the states being so close is that people never know where we're from.
Gracelyn: It took me a minute to find it.
Nick: So kind of a little Cheat code that we have too. A lot of times we get asked to play a show in Portland or Vermont and be like, “Yeah, we come out to that, but we're not from there” Everybody is so close that we'll know people that come out to shows and they're like out in Portland or Burlington or anything like that. So yeah, I don't know. I feel like it's a cool little thing that we have going.
Gracelyn: I find that really interesting. I was looking through some of the bands that you've played with within the last year and I had the list of TAGABOW, Lowertown, Feeble Little Horse, Hotline TNT, and Bedlock – all of these really neat bands and it seems like the entire issue so far keeps going back to Julia's War. It really does feel like you guys are all super tight-knit and all know each other.
Nick: Yeah, I know. Julia's War is a really special thing. I feel like he's kind of the person that somewhat created this whole thing.
Gracelyn: It really does feel like the middle of it. It just keeps going back to him.
Shane: It's awesome he's great. He's really amazing for the scene and other bands feel lucky to know him because he does awesome stuff and helps everyone out so much. He's like the nicest person ever.
Gracelyn: I saw him play the Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco, and then TAGABOW came back like two weeks later or something to California, and they played with The Smoking Room people.
Nick: He's just the busiest guy ever, but he has his heart in the right place. So I feel like that's how he keeps everything going. He's got that band [They Are Gutting A Body Of Water] he plays in other bands [echotracer], he's got Julia's War, he has so much going on. But because of that, I think that's why everybody kind of gravitates towards Julia's War. It's like a nice little family that we have, which is cool.
Gracelyn: Yeah, totally. Speaking of playing other bands, you guys are also in Sundots?
Nick: Kind of.
Shane: Yeah, Drew's one of our closest friends, so we wanted to tour together and he was just like, “Do you guys just want to play in the band to make it easier?” Less people have to fit in one car and less people. It just worked logistically really well and we just had a really great time doing it. So yeah, we'll still do it every once in a while. But I don't know, I don't want to steal too much of his fame by saying I'm in the band or anything.
Gracelyn: I just saw you're bandcamp. It was like, sometimes we play with them and I was like, “Are they in Sundots?”
Nick: No, he, I guess like, isn't play live that much? I think every time he plays live, we back him up. He used to have a different live band, but I think he was like “you guys are the only people that learn my songs” or something. So we do play live with them. We're kind of his live band. I don't know. It's always like, never put any labels on anything.
Gracelyn: You guys have kind of been around like 2018, 2019, how do you feel you guys have changed since your first EP then your first album to this new one that you guys are working on? The singles Silver Moon and Drive All Night. Those are so good. If that's what the rest of the album is like I'm so excited for you guys.
Shane: Hey, thank you. Yeah. I feel like we've changed a lot, especially with this new stuff. The band kind of just started as Nick and I wanting to play music and it was easy because we were living together at the same time and we were always around. We never had the intention for it to be that serious of a thing. We would just make songs together and record them in our mom's basement. We didn't really grow up with people that were super interested in music.
“I don't know...it was just out of necessity that we just would work on stuff together.”
We have pretty much the exact same taste in music. So it just made sense. So yeah, we didn't think much of it and just released a few things and started playing shows.
But then, I don't know, from there it just became really fun and we found out we work really well together. It kind of increased in seriousness and we started touring more. With our stuff that we're going to release this year I feel like we're finally - at least for me - releasing. It feels like a really big difference and it's definitely my favorite stuff that we've made so far. It just seems like a new step for us in terms of just kind of exploring new sounds and approaches to songwriting. I think it paid off. It was fun and challenging to do and push ourselves into new directions- I'm excited for the new stuff.
Gracelyn: First you were recording in your parent's basement and now you guys are actually mastering in a studio - I think it was called Big Something studio?
Shane: Yeah, Big Nice Studio.
Gracelyn: Yeah. I like the name.
Shane: It's the best. It's right outside of Boston and our friend Brad runs it. At first, we didn't really know how to record stuff and we're just figuring it out. Then eventually we wanted to take the next step and record in a studio, invest more time into it. I can't believe it's been that long. It doesn't feel that long, but 2018 is kind of a long time ago now.
Gracelyn: Yeah, I totally feel it. I mean the world in the last five or six years it's crazy. I have a quick question, Shane, you go to Boston. Do you go to Berklee College of Music?
Shane: No well, kind of. I went to Emerson and was able to take classes at Berklee just through Emerson. That's a cool thing about Boston. I feel like there's just a lot of musicians and music happening, so it's a fun place to be, right now.
Gracelyn: I have a friend from high school who's there right now.
Shane: It's really cool. I kind of feel a little bit out of touch with it just because since I've graduated school most of the people that I know move away. That's the only thing that kind of sucks about Boston. It seems like a very transient place, people just come and then go really quickly. When I was in school, still living in Alston, there's just so many house venues and basement shows happening. So that was just the coolest thing ever and awesome that you're able to go to a show every weekend and see a new band. I feel so lucky to have been around that.
Gracelyn: Yeah, I feel like it's such an early twenties, college experience. You show up to some dinky basement and you don't really know who's playing or you only know one band. Or you just know the people that are setting it up. I just find it so fun. But, there's a huge problem of stuff keep getting shut down, it's really hard for venues to stay open and all that type of shit. It's so neat to be able to show up and see people who come to other shows or see other bands that come to shows.
Shane: It's the best. I love the community aspect of it too, yeah, it does suck. It's impossible to keep them open. We were having shows in my basement and it felt like we were doing it for so long, but we only had four or five shows just because it's really hard to make it last- cops inevitably come. But it's cool that for the most part, Boston is pretty resilient in that way. When a venue will get shut down, another one will open. I hope that continues to be the case.
Gracelyn: Do you have Letterboxd Top four?
Nick: I haven't looked at mine in so long - my top four - but I definitely use Letterboxd.
Shane: I love the idea of the top four.
Gracelyn: Did you guys have any favorite movies from 2023 that you guys really liked?
Nick: I just saw this movie called Monster, which I think only came to America in 2024. But on Letterboxd I'm looking right now says 2023. It's like this Japanese movie. It was really good. I can't remember what else came out in 2023.
Shane: Showing up was 2023. I think that was great.
Nick: That was.
Gracelyn: I couldn't find a showing for it but I wanted to see it.
Shane: I just found it online somewhere and I saw it kind of late. But I love Kelly Reichardt, one of my favorite directors.
Nick: That was great.
Gracelyn: I know it has the same style as Frances Ha. I forget what it's called, where they're just kind of talking it just seems like you're just in conversation with them.
Shane: Yes! Yeah.
Nick: I love movies like that. That kind of just kind of relaxing in a way- nothing, too serious ever happens. I mean, Showing Up gets kind of intense. But, that informed a lot of our old music. We love slice of life types of movies and things like that. Slow music, slow movies. That was like a big thing that we would always talk about in interviews. Back in the day, when we had more monotone music. Showing Up kind of fits with our tastes in that way.
Gracelyn: I know people call you slowcore, this whole, new genre thing. Do you guys like that? Do you guys enjoy being part of the slowcore, genre? I feel like it popped up out of nowhere.
Nick and Shane: Yeah
Nick: I don't really mind it. I feel like we never really set out to be a slowcore band, and now we're not as slow anymore, so they're calling us shoegaze…
Gracelyn: Which is like the next step usually.
Nick: I'm not trying [to be]. We're trying to do anything – *sarcastic* "Oh we're going to make a shoegaze album" or something like that. To me, I don't necessarily think of it in that term.
“I'm just making the only kind of music that I feel like I can make or that I like
to make.”
If people want to put labels on it,d. I mean, we definitely sound like a lot of bands that are also considered slowcore/shoegaze, so it makes it easier for people.
Shane: Yeah, I was going to say, I think it's helpful, especially because I feel like I'm bad at identifying genres in a way. So it's helpful to explain to someone who's asking about our music to be like, people say it's this. If it's a big enough thing, people will just get it more. I don't have to find words to explain it because I'm bad at that.
Nick: Then also, I feel like it sounds insane when a coworker who's not that into music or something asks you what your band is and you're like, "We are slowcore" -They'd be like what is that?
Shane: I always say indie rock.
Gracelyn: So last few questions here, three week tour in March- Where are you guys going? What are the deets on that? Also, just talking about your new album in general.
Nick: Yeah. The tour is still kind of in the works. But the plan is now to go down to Texas and then out to California. Then we just end it in California and make our way back, not playing any shows. That's the plan, it might end up looking differently depending on what we actually book. And then the new album, I’ll let you take it away, Shane.
Shane: We're excited. Going to release a few singles leading up to it. The album is called Night Songs and I think it's pretty different for us. It's a little bit louder than our other stuff. More vocal driven, like a little bit more melodic and kind of ambitious in terms of vocal approach.
At least that's how I approached it. I don't know how other people will perceive it, but yeah, I know I'm really excited. It will be out in at the end of April, but yeah, releasing some new songs super soon.
Nick: A big difference on this album is the band Shepp Treasure, She collaborated on a lot of these songs with us. She is singing on half of the album. I'm really excited about that because she's one of my favorite musicians.
Gracelyn: Well, what's it been like working with her? Adding another person to your process.
Nick: Of course. It's been, it's kind of the same. I play in her band. So we're really, really close. And then it was way easier than I thought because I was like, “Can you sing me songs” and gave her almost no guidance. Then she just showed up to the studio, did it in one go. She is kind of similar to us in a way where she's down for anything. So as opposed to,, maybe some other people, it was really easy to work with her. Not to say people are hard to work with, we were scared to let someone new in, but she killed it.
Gracelyn: That's neat. I'm excited for you guys. It'll be really cool.
Shane: Thanks for asking us to do this. This was super fun.