It only made the pain that much more acute. SEA FOAM GREEN (Etc., 2002)Another non-album track the band recorded for a comp – and another fan favourite, Sea Foam Green is a continual torrent of escalating lyrical intensity set to a driven, driving melody. Drank and just about smiled. It is, of course, the Jawbreaker logo. Like many power pop bands, Letters to Cleo always seemed a hard-luck case. The song itself is simple, but it doesn’t matter. By the time the bridge drops, we realize we’re in for a different kind of ride: feedback shimmers and scrapes at your ears as the guitars are finally let loose while the rhythm section pounds away beneath the squall. Greg Pratt - April 21, 2015. The Donnas appear in the film, churning out "Rock ‘N' Roll Machine" (not the Triumph song)." Jawbreaker have always been that kind of band. (24 Hour Revenge Therapy, 1994)A not-so-straightforward love song, Do You Still Hate Me? You said, ‘I love you.’ I guess you did.”. Even Jawbreaker’s most frenetic early songs were tempered with a knack for melody, but until the release of Dear You, Ache was their most mellow moment to date. Starting with nothing but gentle bass chords, tension gradually builds underneath the most affecting, plaintive vocals we’d ever hear from Blake. Seemed like a good sign,” opines Schwarzenbach. From the get-go you can hear the hallmarks of Jawbreaker to come: the push and pull of the rhythm section, the subtle melody woven into the layered lead guitars that only comes out after repeat listens, and the classically angsty, doubt-fueled lyrics from Blake Schwarzenbach. Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Can I call you? A late night cigarette of a song, it was the last track the band recorded before Schwarzenbach’s throat surgery, and the gravelled pain of his delivery only exacerbates the situation of the characters he’s singing about: “Hey mister, can you spare a dime? Nowadays “Boxcar” functions more as a time machine back to the pre-Internet days when tree-paper zines like Maximum Rocknroll and punk-on-punk gossip ruled the roost. You asked me in. Louder is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. This is a pop song meant to raise welts. “Jinx Removing” handles the subject with more nuance than most could ever hope to muster: it’s a chronicle of a relationship falling apart, and the yearning desire to pull things back together by any means possible, like superstitious nonsense and … taking a good, long walk. ACHE (24 Hour Revenge Therapy, 1994)Even Jawbreaker’s most frenetic early songs were tempered with a knack for melody, but until the release of Dear You, Ache was their most mellow moment to date. "She Bop" is too good to be remade, and a few cuts lack presence, but overall Jawbreaker is a good listen highlighting a smattering of girl rock that deserves more notice. Singing/screaming your heart out every night takes its toll. A blistering attack of guitars and crashing guitars, it starts off with timid inaction – “Dark secrets burn their vessel. Upon the release of the colossal, expensive, and expensive-sounding Dear You, the super-fans left en masse. By. BA1 1UA. A surge of guitars and emphatic drums, it has inhabits the past and the present in equal measure – to quote Million, a song of theirs that should probably be on this list too, it’s all of both and none of one, and full of emotional turmoil and turbulence as a result. In the meantime then, here are, in no particular order, the 13 best Jawbreaker songs. All rights reserved. While he dabbled with form throughout Jawbreaker’s career, here he stretches his own limits and strikes gold with the story of a landlocked, anthropomorphic boat. I always twisted it around in my head to be about my own life as an only child. And even with the extra grace, there are still plenty missing – not least ‘Boxcar’, their best-known song. Not too long ago, a band even named themselves Jawbreaker Reunion to capitalise on the Google search term (don’t listen to them – they’re terrible), but there’s still no sign that the actual thing is going to happen any time soon, despite the band – guitarist/vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach, bassist Chris Bauermeister and drummer Adam Pfahler – reissuing their classic third album, 1994’s ‘24 Hour Revenge Therapy’, in celebration of its 20th anniversary last year. Drank a beer and felt the chill of fall.” Does he get the girl? I have three tattoos. Despite this, its ragged tale of hope in the face of abject despair and poverty made it a firm favourite, and rightly so. © Someone said your name, I thought of you alone. For a band mostly famous for lyrics, it’s the “Jawbreaker part” where the whole band gets to shine: bass chords rule the day while Blake rips moody leads; the kick drum stomps like mad until the whole song collapses under its own weight. EYE-5 (Whack & Blite EP, 1989) Initially released on the band’s debut EP Whack & Blite, which was later tacked onto the end of debut album Unfun, Eye-5 is the story of a moralistic garbage truck driver who goes on a shooting spree to cleanse the world of evil-doers in a presumed attempt to ascend to Heaven. The bassline burbles along like a bouncing ball, ducking and weaving around a stinging single-string guitar, until the drums come stomping down the hall — the hooks are set before Blake sings a word. The best of everything, every day on TeamRock.com, Rumours of a Jawbreaker reunion have been rife almost since the (now) seminal three-piece broke up in 1996, but they’ve been especially prevalent recently. Roddy Bottum (late of Faith No More) leads Imperial Teen through "Yoo Hoo" (also a video featuring Jawbreaker Rose McGowen)" and the ranting "Water Boy." Jawbreaker was formed in 1986, by then NYU students Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler. DO YOU STILL HATE ME? Tearing out to grab a mouthful. Songs and music featured in Jawbreaker Soundtrack. “Chesterfield King” is the perfect short story boiled down and rendered even more perfect by setting it to music. A tale of young love, Schwarzenbach’s pithy and incisive turns of phrase elevate this from a simple love breath into a tome of epic emotional proportions that ruminates not only on the love in question, but through the protagonist’s chance encounter with a “toothless woman” in a 7-11 parking lot, pits the folly and freedom of youth against the experience and wisdom of age, while also confronting the human mortality head on with one simple couplet: “Sat and smoked against the wall. After a promising start with debut album Unfun, they slowly built a following of fans who hung on Blake’s every lyric and lapped up the band’s particularly effective strain of proto-emo intensity. Bivouac the album was the strangest, most majestic thing Jawbreaker ever did — dark, sprawling suites about kings and sculptors sit alongside story-songs about love and liquor. Another winter’s coming on”, “Lean your head on mine, like you used to (Used to your lean)”, “I never felt like this before. Once Nirvana blew the doors open for the DIY/let's-make-a-band/indie/garage revival, and technology made it possible to make a record in your living room, keeping track of the staggering amount of great music is a daunting, nigh impossible, task. It’s actually one of the brightest moments on one of their darkest records — 20+ years on, “Want” positively shines. It was just too damn difficult to choose. Speak up and share your favorites in the comments — they’re all worthy. Of course, as it does, that just makes things worse: “I tried to drink you off my mind. Several times the song seems to stop, only to interject samples about ants and temporary shelters before the noise slams back down. The kind of band whose lyrics you pore over, learn by heart, make your own. Sifting the comments on YouTube for just about any Jawbreaker song will find someone insisting that, “No, THIS is the greatest Jawbreaker song ever written.” There is literally no consensus. KISS THE BOTTLE (Etc., 2002) Initially released on a compilation called Music For The Proletariat, Kiss The Bottle only gained a place on a Jawbreaker album when posthumous rarities collection Etc. 24 Hour Revenge Therapy gets the lion’s share of love, but even that isn’t set in stone. I taste our last kiss.” 20 years later, it still lingers on the lips of everyone who’s heard it. It’s a progressive punk song, simultaneously fast and slow, expansive yet conventional and of all the lyrics of all the Jawbreaker songs, it perhaps contains the one string of lines that sums up the band better than anything: “Read and I felt so small. Then I remembered us in that bed.” Existential crisis, the insignificance of humanity, the burden of wasted potential, literature, alcohol, nostalgia and sex – not bad for four short lines, is it? Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Hardly any records sold — the band fell apart with only the scraps of their dignity and a large pile of money. The band would throw another equally thought-provoking party on Dear You, too, with Bad Scene (Everyone’s Fault), but the dramatic, epic urgency of this tune means it wins out. Having publicly declared they’d never sign to a major label – as Nirvana and Green Day, etc. The very first song on the very first album proved to be Jawbreaker’s first legitimate classic, hitting pay dirt right out of the gate. I look back at all the things that we once did. It’s always been my favorite. There’s a treeish thing on my calf that doesn’t really bother me, and another on my back so unmentionably bad it shall remain undescribed in any public forum as long as I draw breath. It comes off as snotty, bratty, and more than anything: cute. I was just the same, 20 blocks away”). Both angles worked equally well, but in different ways, and the dichotomy of Jawbreaker (and their fans) was born. The bigness of everything serves the song just right, actually heightening the intensity — it’s the one shining moment where Dear You completely fulfills its promise. They may not have invented the move, but they dabbled with it on Unfun (see the moody ending of “Fine Day“) and took full ownership on Bivouac. It’s no secret the lyrics are the special sauce with Jawbreaker. Shortly after Bivouac’s release, Schwarzenbach underwent emergency throat surgery to remove a polyp that could have ended his career (or life, apparently). Listen to trailer music, OST, original score, and the full list of popular songs in the film. I hold my breath. No recap can match the execution of the lyrics themselves: “We pulled each other into one, parkas clinging on the lawn, and kissed right there / Said, ‘All my chicks, they smoke these things,’ and handed you a Chesterfield King / Held your hand and watched TV and traced the little lines along your palm.”. Disenchantment had a sound and a solution all at once. Order. What makes it all the more powerful is that it’s a one-way conversation. 19 February 1999; 12 songs; Follow. Oddly enough, Dear You has become something of a dividing line amongst Jawbreaker nerds. Blake had made public statements to the effect of “we’ll never sign to a major” and the punk rock peanut gallery was already voicing disdain since the band had been picked to open for — shudder — Nirvana.