Jawbreaker – 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

Maybe there’s a certain age you’ve got to be to get completely hooked on to the sort of evocatively emotional lyricism you find on Jawbreaker’s third album, 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. Take for example Ashtray Monument. 

Run for cover, there's a big one coming
You'll be lucky if you're at ground zero
No one said that this life was easy
Did that no one ever live a life this hard?

It is a little over the top perhaps, but when I first heard Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, I was instantly hooked. The truth is, I came to this album a lot later than most lifelong Jawbreak fans must’ve. I was in my early twenties, either just graduating college or already dealing with issues of a grown-up life like rent and utilities and bills. But the record – and Bivouac before it – struck a chord somewhere deep within my core. And unlike many of my other favourite records, in the case of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, it was almost entirely down to its lyricism. Examples are strewn all over the album. 

Like on Verse 2 of album opener and perennial solo acoustic guitar performance favourite, The Boat Dreams From The Hill.

Boat remembers the carpenter's sure hand.
Missing fishy flutter on it's rudder.
Sold at an auction, on the dolly ever since.
Sometimes rainy days drop boyish wonder.

He keeps patching it and painting.
Thinking about his pension plan.
But the boat is out to pasture.
Seems it never had a chance.

And its simple, catchy, cathartic chorus.

I want to be a boat.
I want to learn to swim.
Then I'll learn to float.
Then begin again.

And on Boxcar, the song that has ever since been my first line of defence against the voice in my head that asks me the wrong questions about selling out and whatnot instead of asking the right ones about capability, desire, and ambition. 

I'm coloring outside your guidelines
I was passing out when you were passing out your rules
One, two, three, four
Who's punk? What's the score?

(Ironically the very punk purism that they were railing against on Boxcar would come to bite Jawbreaker in the ass right after the release of Boxcar and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. Their next album, and their final one, would be the major label release, Dear You, a target for accusations of selling out.)

Or on the previously mentioned Ashtray Monument, an emotional outburst for days that feel particularly overwhelming. 

After all, it's not that bad
I still have pictures, I look back
At all the things that we once did
You said "I love you" I guess you did

Remember our life?
I did the dishes while you read out loud
Best friends, strangers now
Were our kids all we could call common ground?

With an extract of Jack Kerouac reading from October in the Railroad Earth on Condition Oakland.

… the street is loaded with darkness. Blue sky above with stars hanging high over old hotel roofs and blowers of hotels moaning out dusts of interior, the grime inside the word in mouths falling out tooth… 

And finally on Do You Still Hate Me, a plainly-stated portrait of the post-breakup mind, which serves as a notable exception to the album’s meandering writing style.

Are you out there?
Do you hear me?
Can I call you?
Do you still hate me?
Are we talking?
Are we fighting?
Is it over?
Are we writing?

Every song features intensely quotable, intensely personal, emotional lyrics – personal tribulations, small and large, laid out with close to no fear of judgment. Young souls laid close to bare. It’s no wonder that the poeticism of this album and its initially derided followup, Dear You, would go on to serve as an early lyrical blueprint for the emo that would take over malls all over the world in the early 2000s. On some days, a disproportionate response to one’s woes seems absolutely justified, and that’s just as true for a teenager as it is for thirty-something. On those days, an album like 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is a god-send.