DS Throwback: Thirty Years of Jawbreaker’s “Dear You”

If Jawbreaker wasn’t on the radar of record execs before 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, they were after it was released. The album has gone on to be a favorite of the bands for fans and critics alike. Yet, whatever status as darlings of the scene the band had was about to be compromised. Before the album’s release, the band would go on to get an opening spot for Nirvana’s US Tour. Nirvana was well past the point of being known as sellouts. It was only a matter of time before big music snatched up Jawbreaker.

Jawbreaker’s success got them into meetings with a lot of big record labels. They eventually signed with DGC Records, who had signed Nirvana a few years earlier, but with that came a bit of a reform from the band in the way their music sounded. The guitar tone is cleaner, and so is Blake’s voice. Mostly gone were his gruff growls, almost as if he had needed a break from them. It’s no secret that Blake had throat surgery before recording 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, resulting in his singing voice going up a couple of octaves. Blake started writing songs to fit his vocals, and Dear You was the result. It’s something you can feel in the opening track, “Save Your Generation.” With lines like, “We’re killing each other by sleeping in,” the song is a plea to the slacker generation and being pessimistic about the world around you.

“I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both” is as close to an older Jawbreaker song as we get tempo-wise off Dear You, but it’s filtered through the band’s updated sound. Lyrically, the song follows what a lot of pop-punk songs about relationships cover: a kind of reluctant savior. The first line of the second verse states, “How could I save you when I couldn’t save a dime?” Essentially saying, “I can’t function like an adult, how can I save this relationship?” When I write these retrospectives, I always feel like I skimp out on how the band plays; really, it’s always solid. There’s no exception here. While tensions may have been boiling between Chris Bauermeister and Schwartzenbach, they’ve never felt more musically in tune with each other.

The first single off Dear You was “Fireman.” The song is Blake detailing dreams about an ex dying in a myriad of ways. Blake’s way of using imagery in this song is fantastic. The melodic riff used in the intro and between the verses seems to be a reset, like the narrator is waking up after each of these, and the riff puts him back into another of these dreams. The chorus and bridge seem to be the narrator acknowledging the dissociation and repressed emotions. 

You can’t go into this album without talking about the song “Accident Prone.” This song, along with “Jet Black” and “Basilica,” feel like proto-Jets to Brazil songs. Slower, more meditative, and leaning closer to what would be considered emo than punk rock. The song seemingly is about being at the lowest point in the narrator’s life and the reflections of how they got there. The opening lyrics to each verse bring up an almost fight-or-flight response.

“What’s the furthest place from here?”

“What’s the closest you can come to an almost total wreck?”

”What’s the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love?” 

Blake’s intro to the song on Jawbreaker’s Live 4/30/96 album talks about how the song is about a scary time the band had the previous year. Sometimes it only takes a small nugget of a feeling to get to that place. This isn’t the wordiest song, but it does cut hard, probably more than most songs in general.

It would be easy to dismiss “Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” as too poppy for Jawbreaker if it wasn’t such a great song. In an album that can be considered musically moody in some points, its bright guitars do stick out a bit. The song tells the story of running into a friend at a party who had recently been dumped by his girlfriend, but the girlfriend was in the other room with her new boyfriend. There’s also this dissection of what it’s like to be the old(er) guy at a party when you’re kind of over that scene. I’m not sure who chose the singles for this album, but this should have been one of them.

 As a punk rocker and nerd, I always get stuck debating how I should spend my May 4th, celebrating Star Wars or Jawbreaker. I know, ideally, you can do both, but it’s still tough. That being said, “Sluttering (May 4th)” is hands down one of the best songs about the end of a relationship. It doesn’t fall into the immaturity that some songs did during this era, making either a joke or name-calling, but whoever these songs are about did Blake dirty. Each word of the last verse feels like a nail in a coffin, and each snare drum hit hammers them in place. Blake’s repeating of “If you hear this song a hundred times it still won’t be enough,” clings the sentiment to them.

“Boxcar” was rerecorded for Dear You, but it was not put on the record’s original release, one of the few instances where the band successfully avoided one of their already popular songs being included on their album. The recording was eventually put on an album of B-sides and non-album songs called Etc., released in 2002 and on its rerelease in 2004. This version of “Boxcar” matches the band’s reformed guitar tone, but is played nearly identically to its original version, which in a way describes the reunited band. 

Despite initially being hated by fans, Dear You went on to be one of Jawbreaker’s most popular albums. If you’ve followed Blake’s career, it’s nowhere near the left turn that Jets to Brazil would end up being, which is, meant in the best way. On top of using the song title “Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” for a tribute record, “I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both” was used as a title for a book written by Mariah Stovall, which explores the codependent relationship between two women. The lyric, “What’s The Furthest Place From Here” is the title of a critically acclaimed comic book written by Matthew Rosenberg and drawn by Tyler Boss. “Accident Prone” itself has been covered by the likes of Hayley Williams of Paramore and others, but one of the best renditions of the song is Julien Baker’s piano-driven cover.

I think Jawbreaker would have evolved into what Jets to Brazil became. It’s kind of a shame that the band disintegrated not too long after Dear You was released. Schwarzenbach swore up and down that the band would never get back together, feeling he could not sing the songs anymore and not wanting to do a disservice to the fans, but we all know how that turned out. If you’ve been lucky enough to catch any of the shows since their 2017 reunion, then you know this hasn’t been the case. One of these tours has been specifically to tour Dear You. Fans want another record from the band, but I could see Blake’s hesitancy, given the reception of this album. His last official release was a Forgetters album in 2012. While it’s definitely Blake’s songwriting, it felt like a return to form with Jawbreaker.