Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (2018)

This 33-1/3 volume by Brooklyn-based writer Ronen Givony was something of a disorienting experience for me. I know so little about Jawbreaker and its milieu that it felt like reading about an imaginary band, like Spinal Tap. I did know contemporaneous Jawbox enough to realize I may have been mixing up the two acts, who are associated in various odd ways beyond the first syllable, including a split-single release in 1991. Both are considered “post-hardcore” but Jawbreaker leans decidedly more toward “emo,” a category I have long instinctively avoided. Not surprisingly, I’m not much into 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, which sounds to me like fairly uninspired, uh, post-hardcore. But Givony makes a reasonable case for it, delving into the lyrics at will. I take it as given that the album is important to an audience, although I must also note that Givony says it had sold only 70,000 copies by 2018, nearly 25 years after its release. Of more interest to me here was the narrative of punk-rock authenticity in the Bay Area, based around the fanzine Maximum Rocknroll and the Berkeley all-ages club on Gilman St. In that scene, signing to a major label was considered heretical and the price for doing so was banishment (“canceled,” it’s called today). Again, this is a corner of rock—“pop-punk” is another label—I just don’t know well. Green Day is probably the most famous example. They were banished. So was Jawbreaker, who not only signed with a major label, but also committed the sin of touring with Nirvana. It’s a tough world out there. Most purist impulses tend to be bullshit, but also I don’t hear that much of merit in the band or album, just between you and me. I can hear the Husker Du influence, and I was interested to learn what a landmark act Husker Du is for emo. It makes sense. Givony spends a lot of time on the mostly unintelligible lyrics, reaching for literary comparisons like John Milton. Well, maybe. The Wikipedia article even says their influence “has led some critics to label Jawbreaker as the best punk-rock band of the 1990s.” To me that’s ridiculous, but Givony makes a good case that the album is important and sincerely embraced by at least 70,000 people, so maybe so. I’ll just call it one more blind spot on my part.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.