Here are seven bands playing Jawbreaker songs. Now, Jawbreaker is not one of my favouritest bands ever. I have one Jawbreaker CD called “Unfun” (which I like – I think – I haven’t played it in 4 years, but it has that awesome song “Want” on it), and I think “Dear You” is one of the worst albums I have ever had the misfortune to hear. Musically. I understand a lot of people think this record is the equivalent of some kind of really important thing, and that the lyrics are amazing or something. I didn’t pay attention to that side of things as I had borrowed it and didn’t really have the chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb. But the music was terrible. Sorry. Leatherface is miles better.
Anyway. Seven bands. The Crush kick things off in a pleasant fashion by covering a song named “Kiss the Bottle”, and basically sounding like Jawbreaker. It’s very melodic and has those familiar chuggy guitars. I enjoy it, but I would put on a Broccoli record first. Next up we have a band named 1956 doing “Save Your Agression”, but with a singer who is doing a cross between Blake and Bowie. The song is slow and fairly boring. Maybe the original has these traits too. It then gets loud and booming, ok. After that we have the worst named band ever (even if they are joking), “Something About Vampires and Sluts.” Their cover song is “Jet Black” and the FX’ed vocals are atrocious. It is the Cure covering Jawbreaker or something like that – this song will either make you laugh or cry, and not for good reasons. Bands like this make me want to invent a time machine and destroy the 1980s. HORRID. Luckily the Saddest Landscape redeem things with “Accident Prone” done in an awesome fashion. The music was recorded in a shoebox by the sound of it, but the Landscape bring their own style to the song, with totally wrenched vocals being emo’ed out over the clashing guitars. The song has a totally passionate feel to and it sounds “right” – a good cross between Jawbreaker and the covering band, as such a recording should be. I particularly love the yelled vocals over the twinkling emo guitars. Very good, this song is the standout here. By miles. Books Lie do “Fireman” and this is a pointless techno version, I am not sure why Books are persisting with these ‘adventures’, it worked on the Level Plane 7″ but all the stuff since just hasn’t clicked with me. Hohum. John Brown Battery do an acoustic cover of “Do You Still Hate Me” (which for all I know may have been acoustic originally), personally I would have preferred to hear them do a song straight up. It’s nice enough, but not to worry. Last up is the Goodboysuit (a name that makes me giggle every time I see it – ridiculous), and they do “Bivouac” in a pretty interesting fashion, they have a bit of that midwest power trio sound going on (Boys Life, Giants Chair) though they probably have eight members or something. And they are a bit more ROCK, like Riddle of Steel. I enjoyed this, it was melodic and had energy. I would be interested to hear more of this band.
Weird comp all round. If you are a Jawbreaker fan then give it a look I guess!