DS Throwback: Twenty-five years of Jets to Brazil’s “Four Cornered Night”

After Jawbreaker’s tumultuous breakup in 1996, Blake Schwartzenbach moved to New York City. Trading one trio for another, Schwartzenbach recruited Jeremy Chatelain (Handsome) and Chris Daly (Texas is the Reason) and formed Jets to Brazil in 1997. This new band would go on to record and release their first album, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, in 1998.  It’s strange that this album was as well received as it was, considering Jawbreaker’s foray into a cleaned-up sound with Dear You did not go over well with their fans. While Orange Rhyming Dictionary feels like its own thing, it definitely still has Jawbreaker in its system. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This album, like many after a songwriter parts from a seminal band, is expected to have some DNA from the previous outlet. 

Almost five years to do the day that Jawbreaker released Dear You, Jets to Brazil released their second album, Four Cornered Night. The album continues Schwartzenbach’s journey into a poppier sound which makes this a riskier album, but it does pay off. Jets to Brazil’s songs have this meditative quality to them, something that was established on Orange Rhyming Dictionary, and is explored much more thoroughly here. By this time, they had added a second guitarist, Brian Maryansky, to round out the band and give them a much fuller sound, but also gave Blake the chance to experiment more with other instruments.

The album opener, “You’re Having the Time of My Life,” shows this well. Its wavering opening riff makes you unsure of what is coming. There’s mystery in it through a build-up that gives way to some strums of the guitar that set everything straight, and goes into the first verse. Later the riff is repeated to transition us to other parts of the song. The guitar is brighter than most of the songs on Jets To Brazil’s previous album and definitely more than Jawbreaker’s catalogue. The chorus is one of the other shiny parts of this song. Not even because of its lyrics, which are some of Blake’s strongest, but with the use of bells as they emphasize the chords after the first line of the chorus. It’s a nice preview of the experimentation with instruments not of the norm on this type of album.

It’s so hard to parse Four Cornered Night down to a handful of tracks without it being too first-side-heavy. It’s perfect in its sequencing and there’s almost a Beatlesque quality to it, especially with “Air Traffic Control.” That guitar tone and riff feel like a slower take on the Fab Four’s “And Your Bird Can Sing” from 1966’s Revolver. Of all the lyricists that have come from punk rock, why Blake’s lyrics don’t get some sort of academic analysis is beyond me. If anyone knows their way around song composition, it’s him. While it wasn’t unusual to compare a relationship to a plane crash, Schwartzenbach’s expanded interpretation of the metaphor is one of the better examples of imagery used on this album. 

There’s a good chunk of this album that features Blake on piano or keyboard. Unsurprisingly, he takes to them well.  The keyboard intro on “One Summer Last Fall” is another surprise on this album, but Blake’s use of piano on “In The Summer You Really Know” shines and leads the song to being one of the strongest tracks on the album. The piano starts off very prominent and sounds like it’s mixed louder in the beginning, but gradually fades enough until it mixes in with the rest of the instruments, which includes a cello part played by Amy Domingues. Partway through, there’s a break of just Blake’s piano, but at some point, the piano subtly drops out.

If Blake Schwartzenbach has a country song it’s “Empty Picture Frame.” The first minute and a half of the song is just Blake and a guitar before the band joins him; it feels like it could be sung by Hank Williams. While Blake’s vocals and guitar keep with the quasi-honky tonking, the rest of the band comes in a bit shaky. A lot of this album feels like this, but not in a bad way. Sometimes unsure of the risks it takes, it’s almost as if Blake was crucified for experimenting with a softer and cleaner sound or something. 

Schwartzenbach had been in New York for about three years when this album was released. “Your X-Rays Have Just Come Back from the Lab and We Think We Know What Your Problem Is,” seems to be about that exact thing. The imagery Blake uses to describe the city, some of its people, and how he’s dealt with them during his time there, paired with this almost upbeat song, gives the impression that NYC is a double-edged sword. While the sentiment isn’t necessarily unique, the observation through his lens surely is.

Everyone’s an artist with a pristine vision

A cellular intelligencer 

With a fire in her kitchen

Too many chiefs on dope

And the rich don’t want to listen. 

The album ends with “All Things Good And Nice.” The lyrics are written in couplets, two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. Blake spends five and a half minutes thanking everyone from his family to his bandmates and even his piano. If you weren’t convinced that Blake Schwartzenbach could write an album full of ballads and pop songs by the end of this album, then you probably never understood Blake to begin with. 

Four Cornered Night is Blake Schwartzenbach at his most experimental. From the arrangements of the instruments used to Schwartzenbach’s reflective lyrics, this album feels like an exercise in how to progress as a songwriter. I don’t think he went out to make a post-punk/emo album via Brian Wilson, but it’s what came out. Proving, he’s not just one of punk’s best songwriters, but one of the best songwriters in general.