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JAWBREAKER
Dear You (Black Ball)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz
On the inside cover of the 1995 album Dear You is a picture of Kurt Cobain, proudly displaying his Jawbreaker T-shirt; one would think, skimming the surface of pop-punk lore, that the tables of hero worship would be turned much differently.
As much as Nevermind did four years before, the sound of Dear You has come to define an emo generation's angst. While Cobain self-medicated though, sipping steaming cups of Pennyroyal Tea, swallowing back the bitter black acid of his own malaise in Lithium, bands like Jawbreaker followed closely, but in the tracks of the Ramones with a tongue in cheek sort of angst about being angst ridden. Where Nirvana never seemed to take its cause lightly, the guys from Jawbreaker can be imagined laughing over beers in a parked car; Cobain didn't get life, these guys just didn't quite grasp girls.
With the re-release of Dear You it is clear that Jawbreaker greatly informed a giant swath of the pop-punk slop that muddies contemporary alternative radio. But don't blame them if Blink-182 or Dashboard Confessional have exploded; Jawbreaker's sound is accomplished and intelligent, both musically and lyrically, it is the imitators who've cheapened it. With the expanded edition weighing in at over an hour, Dear You sounds more like a real life work than an album. Songs like "Accident Prone" litter the disc, longer, more polished than songs a third their length. At over 6 minutes, it feels as crisp, and as taut, as any of the swarm from say Rocket to Russia. Vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach is gravelly (coming off of throat surgery on this album) and furious but charming in his wounded sound nonetheless; his "Lurker II: Dark Son of Night" is like something Cobain might have written but belied his darker sense of purpose. The band as a whole is expert in mixing up mid tempo songs with quiet, almost haunting dirges.
Fair or not, Dear You comes in beneath the radar. Forgetting how accomplished and influential it is, there is something really fun about listening to it from end to end, including the five song bonus materials where "Into You Like a Train," a cover of the Psychedelic Furs, shines as the star. All stuffiness and place in history aside, the time idling away on Jawbreaker's joyous, jocular, frightfully delightful sound is time well spent.
© 2004 - Erick Mertz