In the mid-90s the musical landscape was recovering from earth-shattering events that rattled the foundations of the soundscape. Grunge had broken through the shiny veneer that had encompassed popular music and in a monumental year, 1993 saw Nirvana’s final proper album, In Utero, one of the highest selling grunge albums of all time in Pearl Jam’s Vs., one of the archetypes of what would later be given the umbrella term Alternative Rock in Smashing Pumpkins‘ Siamese Dream and the debut album from a little band named Radiohead. A year later, as listeners mourned the death of Kurt Cobain, the topography of mainstream music began to shift again with Weezer’s Blue Album, Offspring’s Smash and Green Day’s Dookie. During these years, as rock history was being loudly written in the forefront of popular consciousness, a Bay-area three piece was crafting one of the greatest punk albums ever written, and one of the best records to come out of the 90s.
Jawbreaker’s third full-length, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, stands as an iconic release that influenced an incalculable number of releases that came after it. The songs are at once deeply personal and widely universal, brimming with frustration, dissatisfaction, longing, and broken hope. Jagged, buzzsaw guitars match singer Blake Schwarzenbach’s raspy, eviscerating vocal as the band masterfully unleashes blistering straightforward rhythm and stark, emotive melody.
- The Boat Dreams from the Hill
- Indictment
- Boxcar
- Outpatient
- Ashtray Monument
- Condition Oakland
- Ache
- Do You Still Hate Me
- West Bay Invitational
- Jinx Removing
- In Sadding Around
Side A
In front of a rhythm section that conjures mosh pits at will Schwarzenbach lays out a desolate metaphor for unrealized dreams. The boat is being built on a hill-top but the builder is never able to finish it.
He keeps patching it and painting,
thinking about his pension plan.
But the boat is out to pasture,
seems it never had a chance.
The song moves quickly and ends fairly abruptly, much like the fleeting dreams that escape if we waste too much time before acting on them.
This track’s bouncy guitar, simple, repetitive drumming, and opening lines
I just wrote the dumbest song,
it’s gonna be a sing-a-long.
All our friends will laugh and sing,
our enemies will laugh and be pointing.
It won’t bother me, what the thoughtless are thinking,
I’m more concerned with what we’re drinking
seem to indicate that the band has, indeed, written an easy, cop-out, throwaway song in defense of such other works. As the song unfolds, however, it reveals a dig at shallow pop
It gives me space to think, I guess.
To think less, and less, and less, and less.
and criticizes the record industry for following sales charts instead of quality and “Selling kids to other kids”
. It’s an exploration and excoriation of pop music in a pop form. A spoon full of sugar, and all that.
Often referred to reverently among bloggers, fanboys, and members of current pop-punk bands, “Boxcar” is Jawbreaker’s answer to fan accusations that, by touring with big name bands (up to and including Nirvana) they “sold out”. Opening with
“You’re no punk, and I’m telling everyone.”
Save your breath I never was one.
it rages against the false constraints of “the scene”. In its shortest-on-the-album 1:55 runtime, the song declares that the band will not be held down by pretense. It’s a short, powerful burst of angst against unfair criticism by too-cool scenesters and psuedo-fans.
Like many of the Jawbreaker’s songs, this one is a specific story from Schwarzenbach’s life that masks a broader narrative. It begins as a reference to the throat surgery the singer went through before recording the album, and the process of healing afterwards, but it then expands to detail the process of his songwriting and the feeling of pouring himself into his music. The most melodic song so far on the record speeds as it repeats the chorus
Now I’m talking through my pen.
Do you read me?
Am I bleeding?
Am I bleeding again?
Darker chording and a more disjointed lyrical structure accompany this picture of a shattered family. The stresses of life overcome what might have been a picturesque relationship and in the end all that’s left are memories and the question, “Were our kids all we could call common ground?”
Beginning with dark melody, this song quickly amps up into a driving punk rock tempo, shifting between the two almost constantly throughout the song. It’s an expression of restlessness and homesickness. It’s isolation captured in song, with fuzzy chords and jangly riffs joining the uneven rhythm to create an atmosphere of total uncertainty and a cry of
Desperate, alone, without an excuse.
I try to explain, but what’s the use?
The song then settles into a soft bridge and steady outro accompanied by the sounds of Jack Kerouac reading sections of “October in the Railroad Earth.”
Side B
Picking up right where Side A left of, “Ache” is a study in loneliness and listlessness. In trying anything and everything to break out of a vicious cycle of sameness and mediocrity. Beginning
I believe in desperate acts,
the kind that make me look stupid (look like a fool).
Just keep reinventing myself.
It’s move or die.
the song uses dense guitars and layered sounds to create a thick, almost suffocating aesthetic. It ebbs and flows, building up each time until it hits a smooth, cathartic cacophony
So right, so wrong.
Another winter’s coming on.
You win, you lose,
It’s the same old news.
The song then resets and expresses low-key longing
Lean your head on mine like you used to (Used to your lean).
I don’t mind if you’re faking it (Make it seam real).
before ending with one more charged plea of, “Right or wrong, just take me, lead me on.”
“Do You Still Hate Me” serves as a jolt of energy after a fair bit of despondency. Short and to-the-point, it’s a call to a past love
Are you out there?
Do you here me?
Can I call you?
Do you still hate me?
The song isn’t the deepest on the record, lyrically, but the energy it channels during the outro is volatile and explosive to screams of “And I miss you.”
A subdued guitar opens a steamy tale of a West Bay party involving bands, labels, harsh vocals, serrated guitars and a chance encounter in which
I just looked deeper into you.
You bit my neck blue.
We hung our clothes up on the floor,
and put our faith in a closed door.
Not a love song in any way, it lacks all sweetness or sentiment. It’s gritty, dirty and aggressive, ending with repetitive movement and a slow fade out.
Possibly the most punk love song ever written it’s filled with equal parts sentiment
Too old not to get excited about rain and roads,
Egyptian ruins, our first kiss.
I love you more,
than I ever loved anyone before.
Or anyone to come.
Someone said your name.
I thought of you alone.
and dissatisfaction
We’re too smart to watch T.V.
We’re too dumb to make believe this is all we want from life
delivered in the same coarse howl.
Once again laying down thick guitars in front of expansive, slowly building drumming Jawbreaker outlines a dysfunctional relationship that is always ending only to begin again. The song is dissonant, noisy and confused, much like the experience it outlines.
When I throw myself at your feet,
you know it’s to be walked on.
We’re breaking up every single night.…
I say hello, and it’s goodbye again.
Is he talking about a girl? Or is he talking about the frequently fickle punk scene? Maybe both?
Though not nearly as well known as many of the other records released around the same time, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy stands tall among them as one of the best records of the previous decade. The album is a near perfect confluence of lyrical and musical expression in which individual stories aren’t so much told as they are allowed to unfold. The pieces resonate with each other and with each listener to create a whole vastly greater than the sum of its parts, and a work that has influenced practically every fruit that has fallen from the punk/emo/hardcore tree in the last fourteen years.
© Eric Atienza 2008 for Listen In. Some rights reserved.
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