Jawbreaker’s 24-Hour Revenge Therapy: broken-voiced monument to perfection

Amidst the constant rumours of them getting back together, we often forget that it’s been nearly 20 years since melodic punk band Jawbreaker broke up. Just recently, the former Bay Area trio saw the re-release of their monumental 1994 album 24-Hour Revenge Therapy, which Rice and Bread co-founder Jason Schreurs and contributor Greg Pratt would easily put on their top 10 list of albums ever released.

So, like we did with Slayer’s Reign in Blood last month, we got together and had an in-depth chat about an album that will always send chills up our spines.

Jason: I don’t know if you knew this, but 24-Hour Revenge Therapy celebrated its 20th anniversary this year and they just reissued it, so it’s a good time to be talking about this album.

Greg: Really?! Did they? I had no idea… you caught me off-guard here. That’s cool. Well, I listened to the album last night in preparation for this and my first thought was that I didn’t need to listen to it again because I’ve listened to it countless times in my life; it’s got to be one of the albums I’ve listened to the most, period. But then I thought I’d listen to it again, just to get refreshed, and I just couldn’t believe how good it was. I put it on and I was covered in goose bumps the whole time; it was just so good.

Jason: We just did an interview with Tommy Habetz who runs Bunk Sandwiches in Portland and he was saying how with bands like Jawbreaker, you put them on and it never sounds dated, and it hits you just as hard as the first time you heard it. You and I both have albums that we don’t ever have to listen to again because they’re memorized and they’ll always sound like they did back then, but with this album it could easily be a brand new album… So, are you like me and always get “Indictment” and “Boxcar” confused with each other? Aren’t they just one long song?

Greg: I know… [laughs], totally, and I made some notes last night for this conversation, embarrassingly enough, and here’s my second note: “Second song ends, third song starts,” and then in capitals, “EXACT SAME TEMPO AND BASICALLY RIFF.” [Laughs] It’s like, yeah, the second song stops and then the third song starts up again and it’s like the same riff and the same tempo.

Jason: It reminds me of how you always talk about Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss and how each song starts on the beat of the previous song… I’m not a drummer, but you know what I mean. One of the things that’s not talked about too often is that the drumming of Adam Pfahler is phenomenal; he’s got these weird, off-time fills, and even just listening to the drumming alone is a thrill, you know?

Greg: I actually had a note on that as well: “Drumming on this album is just awesome.” It’s pretty simple and it’s nothing crazy, like he’s not going wild back there, but some of those drum fills will be stuck in my head forever. He just did all of the right things on here.

Jason: I want you to quickly pronounce the three members of Jawbreaker’s names if you can…

Greg: Oh, Jesus. [Laughs] It’s like trying to pronounce the names of the guys in The Promise Ring or something. I can’t pronounce them. I mean, Blake SchwwwwarzenBACH… Adam P-p-p-p-fahler… I don’t know.

Jason: Have you ever skipped past “Outpatient” and gone straight to “Ashtray Monument”? Be honest now…

Greg: Yeah, yeah, totally… Is “Outpatient” the one where there’s that classic line, “This is Jennings, your anesthetist”? I can’t even say that word, anesthetist, and I don’t know why anyone would try to incorporate that into the lyrics of one of their songs [laughs].

Jason: I think the story on that one was that Blake wrote the song about his throat surgery, because he had surgery between Bivouac and this one, and then sounded exactly the same afterwards [laughs]. And thought the surgery would ruin his crazy vocals, but it didn’t.

Greg: Also, for years I would skip the first four songs and just start on “Ashtray Monument.” So for a long time I thought the first four songs were throwaways…

Jason: Really? Wow.

Greg: Yeah, which is crazy for me to say, because this is one of my favourite albums ever, but it wasn’t until years and years later where I realized that the first song, “The Boat Dreams from the Hill,” just how amazing and powerful it is, and it seems like the stupidest song about a boat with feelings, or a boat coming to life or something, and it sounds fucking ridiculous, but one day it just hit me how profound and great it was, so I love that song now. But songs two, three and four I’ve been guilty of skipping a lot. I don’t think the album really gets amazing until songs five and onwards, which are just phenomenal. And that first song.

Jason: For me, I always listen to the first three, well, if you consider two and three separate songs [laughs], and then I skip to “Ashtray Monument,” and then I skip past the next two and go to the faster songs again. It’s such an awesome album, but when Jawbreaker get into their slow and depressing stuff, you have to be in the right mood, and there’s a lot of different moods on this album. It goes from bouncy and happy, to sarcastic, to depressing, to suicidal… there are couple of songs on here that have to be the harshest breakup songs ever, “Ashtray Monument” and “Do You Still Hate Me?” which are both absolutely crushing.

Greg: Dear You, the next album, was even worse; it was just out of control. But, yeah, there are some songs on here that are agonizing.

Jason: We all know that Blake is really good at writing lyrics. Do you have any standout lines scrawled down in your notes?

Greg: You know, I started writing down some lines from the last song, which is maybe my favourite song on the album, “In Sadding Around,” and I just had to stop writing them down. It seemed too hokey to be writing down Jawbreaker lyrics, and it just didn’t seem to do them justice. You hear him sing it and you’re like, “Wow, this is amazing,” but then I’m typing it into my iPod and it seems so silly.

Jason: When you read their lyrics they’re kind of embarrassing, and they don’t have the same impact when they’re not with his voice and the music. It’s like that line in “West Bay Invitational” when he says, “People from bands and labels; the good ones,” it sounds so dumb when you read them aloud.

Greg: I always loved this one line, and here we are quoting Jawbreaker lyrics to each other, but it’s on that last song where he says, “I lost my voice, I hope I didn’t break it.” I always found that one particularly chilling in a larger poetic sense.

Jason: To save further embarrassment, I don’t think we should keep talking about Jawbreaker lyrics. “One, two, three, four, who’s punk, what’s the score?” There’s a lyric for you. On the other hand, singing along to these songs is the best!

Greg: Totally. That line “you said I loved you, I guess you did,” I mean, it’s killer stuff, but it sounds so hokey. But there’s just so much emotion on this album, and it’s not at all any kind of emo band where you kind of roll your eyes. This is just real, honest music.

Jason: It’s hard to recapture that honesty that they had. Back in 1994 when this album came out, there wasn’t really an emo scene, and there weren’t all of these different factions; there was just an underground music scene, a punk scene. And Jawbreaker were playing around the same time as The Jesus Lizard, and Helmet, and Nirvana and Quicksand, and then they were part of the Bay Area scene and bands like Samiam, and Monsula, and Green Day and all of these bands that didn’t really sound a lot alike. I remember hearing Jawbreaker for the first time when Bivouac came out and thinking, “What a weird band.” It was very cool.

Greg: I still remember getting the tape and putting it on my Walkman and being very disappointed. I remember listening to it on the bus, and I was pretty young and it took me a long time to understand it. I just didn’t really hit me. So it took me years to finally get it, and it became one of my favourite albums in any genre. To this day, I put it on and feel like I get it more and more all the time.

Jason: It’s definitely a timeless album, and we can’t forget this very important note I have here that says, “The bills are scattered in the yard…” So we can’t get away from the lyrical aspect, but it really doesn’t do it justice unless you listen to it.

Greg: I must mention before we end that “Condition Oakland” is also one of my favourite songs ever. That’s a fantastic song.

Jason: “You’re not punk, and I’m telling everyone!”

Greg: [Laughs] It’s one of the best albums, ever. Period.

A reissue of Jawbreaker‘s 24-Hour Revenge Therapy is available now on Blackball Records via Midheaven Mailorder.