Givony - Jawbreakers 24 Hour Revenge Therapy

24 HOUR REVENGE THERAPY

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We... arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way... watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Bloomsburys 33 1/3 series of books Pitchfork

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Forthcoming in the series:

Transformer by Ezra Furman

In on the Kill Taker by Joe Gross

Okie from Muskogee by Rachel Rubin

Peepshow by Samantha Bennett

Boys for Pele by Amy Gentry

Switched on Bach by Roshanak Kheshti

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Tin Drum by Agata Pyzik

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Southern Rock Opera by Rien Fertel

Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las by Ada Wolin

The Wild Tchoupitoulas by Wagner

Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler

One Grain of Sand by Matthew Frye Jacobson

Southern Accents by Michael Washburn

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24 Hour Revenge Therapy
(or, The Strange Death of Selling Out)

Ronen Givony

Contents

At first glance, Jawbreakers 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (199394) might seem an unlikely choice for a 33 1/3 treatment.

Unlike better-known albums such as Pet Sounds, Exile on Main Street, or Loveless, there was no special mythology attached to its creation, no famously prolonged recording sessions, or bankrupted labels, or rampant drug abuse. Quite the opposite: 24 Hour was made with a minimum of melodrama, over a brisk two days in May 1993, and an additional day of recording a few months laterall for under $2,000.

Unlike a Kid A, an Astral Sounds, or an In the Aeroplane Over the Sea , there are no allusions or especially cryptic lyrics on the album to decipher; no surreal imagery or opaque symbolism; no ideology, politics, or allegory to untangle. Song after song, the language of 24 Hour is one of raw and unequivocal desire, heartbreak, wonder, and self-doubt: a register of extreme confessional candor that would seem to require no interpretation at all.

Finally, unlike a Bitches Brew, an Entroducing, or an It Takes a Nation of Millions , there is nothing radical or even all that innovative about the sounds, instruments, textures, ) By the same measure, it is fair to call the album something other than universal or timeless. That is: along with countless other guitar bands in the early 90s, Jawbreaker was very much a band of their moment. If they had found each other even a short time before or after their ten years as a group (198696), it seems likely that their story would have ended rather differently.

Why, then, 25 years on, does this funny, sad, sweet, bitter, peculiar little album11 songs and 38 minutesretain so much of its original loyalty, affection, and reverence? Why, when so many artists came and went in that confounding decade of the 90s, did Jawbreakerin their own words, the little band that could but would probably rather notcome to seem like more than just another group, like the reason why you got into punk and underground music to start with? Why do they persist, today, in remaining relevant to so many peoplean audience larger by orders of magnitude than when they were together? And how did it happen that, two years after releasing their masterpiece, the band that was somehow more than just another band to its fanscloser to equipment for livingwas no longer?

***

Its a romantic, old-fashioned, and largely obsolete notion: it was their sincerity, their intelligence, their perceived authenticity, andmost of allthe gravity of their words, that set Jawbreaker apart, and ultimately did them in.

At a time when rock music was overwhelmingly laddish, aggressive, and puerilehas there ever been another?Jawbreaker was not above expressing hurt, weakness, empathy, and regret. At a time when punk bands all but exclusively wrote about the minutiae of teenage life, their songs were about resisting the herd of independent minds and the circular firing squad of scene orthodoxy; about the poverty of other peoples expectations, and the fear of growing complacent; about picking over the scabs of ones mistakes, and wondering if you werent going to end up alone, or settling for a life that was less than the one you deserved.

In place of certainty, Jawbreaker dwelt in ambivalence; in place of politics or slogans, their program was one of self-questioning and self-searching, while still trying to have funall expressed in a language that was poetically rich and yet sharp as glass. Then and now, they sounded like a smarter, wittier, more sensitive, observant, and literary version of the many punk and indie bands making music during those years. (Not coincidentally, Jawbreaker is one of the few punk bands ever to count women in significant numbers as fans.) More than Nirvana, more than Operation Ivy, more than Fugazi, even, Jawbreaker was the band that meant everything to the people who knew and cared about them. It was precisely for this reason that, when the romance was over, the rupture and backlash would be as ugly as it was.

***

So what happened? Depending how far back you want to go, you might say it started in the summer of 1993, when Green Daylike Jawbreaker, part of the fiercely independent, do-it-yourself, all-ages Bay Area punk scenesigned to the major label Reprise. Or before that, in 1990, when Nirvana signed to Geffen Records, and set off a stampede of A&R men in search of the next big guitar band. Going further back, for context, we might point to 1986, when the critic Stanley Crouch eviscerated Miles Davis as a compromised sellout; to 1966, in Manchester, when a fan heckled Bob Dylan as Judas! for the crime of playing an electric guitar; or even to the late nineteenth century, when Nietzsche dissed his former friend and idol Richard Wagner as the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art. The story is an old one, and the same: the once-beloved turncoat or traitor who has sold out his art, his integrity, and his communityall for mere commercial enrichmentand in so doing, has fallen from grace.