Reviews

You already want this, but you might not know it yet.  Dear You, Jawbreaker’s now infamous 1995 major-label debut, might very well be called “the best album ever to be deleted from Geffen Records’ catalog.”  Or you could call it “the best record of the nineties that you’ve only heard on mp3’s.”  But now that Dear You has been re-released after years of unavailability, it’s time to ditch today’s flash-in-the-pan emo bands and immerse yourself in this timeless treatise on love, life, and “killing cops and reading Kerouac.”  Frontman/guitarist Blake Schwarzenbach pairs his deadpan observational lyrics with oblique references to everything under the sun while a deceptively complex wave of perfectly produced punk crashes behind him.  At times it’s as if your favorite scratchy-larynxed Literature professor was lecturing over some cleaned-up Crimpshrine.  This 2004 version includes 5 extra songs recorded for the Dear You sessions but not included when the album was originally issued in 1995. I don’t know how fair it is to compare Jawbreaker to Schwarzenbach’s current powerhouse band, Jets To Brazil, but I have to say that if there’s a gun to my head and the question is Four Cornered Night or Dear You, Jawbreaker’s punk-driven soul diving record gets the nod. Now you know that you want it.