Jawbox, Jawbox

I first heard this album during the summer of 1996, and my immediate reaction was, �Who the hell is that drummer?� But I didn�t get the album until I went back to college in the fall. Turns out it was just what I needed. At the time, rock music didn�t have much to offer in terms of a balls-out, shredding sound that didn�t insult the listener�s intelligence. This album�and what I consider to be its companion album, Shudder To Think�s Pony Express Record�accomplished this for me.

That fall term I had a terrible schedule which included the dreaded Intro to Geology (popularly known as "Rocks for Jocks") that most humanities majors took to satisfy their science requirement. As if to punish us further, it was MWF at 8:50. So I would haul myself out of bed, drink two or three cups of very strong tea, and blast this album while singing along with it. That was my morning ritual for a whole term, especially �Livid�, which maybe rocks too hard be a pop song and is too catchy to be a hard rock song. It should have been a staple on commercial alternarock radio stations, but never mind. That song, along with many others, and �Savory� from the previous album, is a great manifesto for Jawbox�s music ethos: Bridge the gap between the raw DC sound of Fugazi, and the more commercial �alternative� sound that was rapidly being diluted and mutated after grunge�s decline. Add some highly literate, often nonsensical lyrics, the very sort that would sound cool to a twenty-year-old English major.

And the little moments throughout the album that became my bread and butter: The second chorus of �Desert Sea�, where the guitars change keys and the vocal line doesn�t, the last chorus of �Excandescent� when Kim Coletta sings backup, the last verse of �Capillary Life�, which always comes to mind during evening commutes: Dream on the evening train / brakes scrape a song through my head. And of course, the drumming throughout. There are a couple drum parts on that album that I�ll simply never be able to play, no matter how hard I try; my limbs simply aren�t wired for it. There were car trips where Mark and I sang along with the album all the way through, taking turns doing the harmonies. And after one such occasion, in the trailing feedback and subsequent silence after the closing song �Absenter�, Mark just said god, what a great album. Indeed: you finish it feeling drained, redeemed, made whole again. What a great band. What a great fucking album.

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