Jawbreaker
24 Hour Revenge Therapy

THE REVIEW

Introduction: this is my first "musical" review, so let's say I'm "experimenting" with various ways to create one. This time, I've decided to use the "Track to Track" method—let's see what comes out of it. I also want to add that I'm not one of those reviewers who say "In this piece, you hear a dubstep rhythm mixed with strictly post synth punk sounds tending toward basic growl with maladapted guitar in harmonic polyionic scale" or things like that (a bit of irony!), I just love listening to music: I'm not a "technician" of it, and if you notice (very likely) historical inaccuracies, please write them in the comments!

(Before starting, a bit of history about the band and company)

Jawbreaker was founded in 1987 in New York, a few years before the release of albums like "Spiderland" by Slint (1989) [Post-Rock] and "Diary" by Sunny Day Real Estate (1992) [Emo]. What do the Jawbreaker have in common with these two albums? The "Jaw" are also credited with revitalizing the music scene by taking sounds very close to Punk but changing the typical themes of the genre ("Like killing cops and reading Kerouac" as the lyrics of their song "Boxcar" say), reaching the point of speaking about feelings or otherwise very introspective themes; the genre is commonly known as "First wave Emo" I prefer to call it "Punk Emo", but the merits of Jawbreaker don't stop there: after the SDRE in 1993 (with precisely the album "Diary") further renewed the genre, creating what's known as "Second wave Emo" (which I just prefer to call "Emo") distancing itself from Punk sounds and creating more personal and harmonious sounds, Jawbreaker thought to "refine" them further with the album "Dear You" of 1995, an album that brings the Emo genre to its completeness both at the level of lyrics and music. But back to 1993, the year in which alongside the SDRE Jawbreaker releases the album I'll review today: "24 Hour Revenge Therapy" in my opinion, the absolute refinement of "Punk Emo" and together with "Dear You" the band's best album.

Let's go!

The album opens in a very energetic way with "The Boat Dreams From The Hill/Indictment" a song that simultaneously feels both cheerful and melancholy, introducing us right away to the typical sounds of Jawbreaker's first three albums: Punk sounds, joy, but with a point of negativity between the lines; this song also tackles one of the recurring themes in Jawbreaker's songs: the underground band ("I just wrote the dumbest song. It's gonna be a sing along. All our friends will clap and sing. Our enemies will laugh and be pointing.")