this being on par with the fourth best Unwound sounds about right however you rank them (can share a pew p comfortably with Repetition for me)
not that this discussion means much coming from a bunch of phxc opinion havers who think they have any business talking about the peak of 1994 without mentioning Jawbox. you nerds are showing yourselves up

Would put FAKE TRAIN (#1), LEAVES TURN INSIDE YOU, and REPITITION above it for sure. Close call with THE FUTURE OF WHAT, though at a glance I'd probably give the nod to NPI.

Cannot say Jawbox even crossed my mind once.

I forget where that one part is in Rome plows where the key seems to shift and the guitar gets a little more deedly and he yells like a little harder but it has this really convincing sense of becoming increasingly unhinged and entropic, kinda like, for me, the ending of Fault and Fracture

Album Rating: 5.0

Jawbox doesn’t have any material deserving of being mentioned with the likes of Yank Crime

Album Rating: 5.0

I mean I guess, but few things deserve being mentioned with Yank Crime. For Your Own Special Sweetheart is essential though

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Their S/T is better

Album Rating: 4.5

Do You Compute got me alive today

Album Rating: 4.5

I peeked Jawbox, t'was okay

not even in the same universe as this, obviously

Album Rating: 4.5

Yeah Jawbox is ight

Album Rating: 4.5

New Math might be least fave on this. It ain’t bad but I gotta kill sumthin

Love how most of this beaut is an expansion on a couple of (quite brilliant) ideas

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Jawbox is solid af, they just don’t have a classic like this

Album Rating: 4.5

they have 2 actually : )





this band is too self indulgent for my liking, they insist upon themselves

Album Rating: 5.0

You don't mean that! Literally one of the best guitar bands of all time. Idk, this isn't nearly as pretentious as it is earnest.

Indulgent =/= pretentious
and Mort is right. the best bits here are astounding precisely bc they go all-out, but this is exhausting and a bit overblown as a full listen
opposite is true for Jawbox — they don't have a single highlight remotely in reach of Luau, but they are better and more grounded songwriters (defs better lyrics to, for whatever that's worth). For Your Own Special Sweetheart is on par with this as an album experience and the final four tracks together are comfortably the greatest achievement between the two

Album Rating: 5.0

Pretty sure I like both DLJ LPs more than For Your Own Special Sweetheart, but that’s just me. Don’t get me wrong, that album is fantastic but I inherently prefer the skronk without mixing in the alt rocky vibes and overly indie clean vox of Jawbox.

weird i didn't have a comment in the thread, nor a rating for the album until now

anyshit, album fucks, your mum sucks, go go gadget noise

Album Rating: 4.5

i was just joking, literally just the dumb thing peter griffin says about godfather



i just like saying things insist upon themselves cos it sounds like it means something but doesnt really and thats fun : )

Album Rating: 4.5

but generally a lot of what johnny said is true.



jawbox are much more focused songwriters and are very consistently good, but they dont have the 'oh shit' wildness/fierceness factor this band has



and jawbox have great lyrics yeh

Album Rating: 5.0

I mean, it just comes down to DLJ absolutely washing Jawbox for me, despite me loving that band on its on merits, in its own context. More focused to what end? Like Jawbox excel at writing more slow burning, building alt rock tunes with more consistent melodic hooks and Drive Like Jehu can write the shit out of a heavy, driving, ever expanding, pulse pounding prog-punk cut like Jawbox really never did. Idk, to call these guys less focused is sort of disingenuous imo. They're great at building upon and reincorporating established motifs in their songs, regardless of how dissonant they are. Idk all the more digestible, halftime, sing-songy stuff that Jawbox does more of than Drive is optional, there's no inherent higher value or greater maturity to it. And most importantly, Drive Like Jehu riff way harder.

Album Rating: 4.5

^^ this. Jawbox are great in a different way but they're more adjacent to bands like Deftones, Helmet, Glassjaw or Quicksand's slower meatier heavier post-hardcore aesthetic. DLJ is more in the school of ATDI, Fugazi, Bear vs Shark, No Knife and the early screamo / emo bands that embody unhinged and unpredictable paranoid energy. DLJ took it to 11 with constantly shifting song structures, meters and tempos and a technical precision no one else was really doing then. They were definitely self-indulgent with their compositions at their own admittance, but so what? That's what they were going for. If you want a "mature" and stripped-down Drive Like Jehu you've got Hot Snakes. Entirely different bands with different sounds, why compare them?