Musically, my tastes are rather narrow. I like dabbling in just about anything, but have only ever truly loved punk. And even that love is a particularly limited one, given that I stopped looking for new punk bands after discovering Jawbreaker three years ago. Since that time, I’ve plundered the internet and record stores for everything that Jawbreaker’s mastermind, Blake Schwarzenbach, has put his particularly brilliant mind to. Like some Post-Modern (or Post-Structuralist, given his philosophical and political leanings) Midas, everything that Mr. Schwarzenbach touches turns to AWESOME, and I do mean AWESOME. His is the sort of work that is grand, sweeping, and just metaphorically MASSIVE. While simple by compositional standards I’ve been told (the man has always worked in a punk vein), there is nothing simple about the energy packed into this music or the lyrics, which find Mr. Schwarzenbach at an entirely new peak.

How deceptive that this 7-inch opens up with the playful and only slightly dark “Vampire Lessons,” a poppy little number about vampires living in modern society. It’s cute and certainly a head-bopper, but entirely uncharacteristic of the other three tracks on the album. While it packs in a decent amount of wit –Schwarzenbach seems most concerned with showing how utterly tedious immortality might be—it lacks the raw emotion of the others. It lacks scope. Given the nature of the other three songs, though, this might be entirely by design.

For if every track on this album was as grand as the second, “Too Small To Fail,” one might not make it through to the end. Lord knows it’s hard enough to make it through this second track, despite how excellent it is, because it is a top contender for one of the most emotionally draining songs ever created. Opening up and underscored throughout by a fragile, delicate and understated bass score, a guitar that fades slowly in-and-out and the occasional ting of the cymbal all behind Blake’s warbling, almost teary lyrics, the song soon explodes. What began as a weak, beautiful little number about the scope of things has become a hard-rocking, screaming torrent of emotion, Blake’s wounded warble becoming a growl and a barbarian scream that cannot fail to give you pause. It’s such a wonderful juxtaposition, made all the more moving by some of the best lyrics this genius has ever penned: “too small to fail, but, baby, someone’s gonna love me someday,” Blake opines as the song comes crashing to a close, and damn it, it’s impossible not to feel at least the ghost of what it is he’s getting at! It would be easy –and right – to claim it the best song on the EP, but would not be exactly fair, for it would be to short-shrift those songs that still remain.

Whatever problems the consummate punk might have with the delicacy of “Too Small to Fail,” they will find ample conciliation in “Not Funny,” by far the hardest track here. Introduced by a rock-steady drum beat and an overloud guitar, the vocals here take a back seat to the instrumentation, and it pays off in every way. In a song such as this, which achieves its effect by volume, its best to leave that job to those implements best suited to the job, and there seem worse methods to achieving this than relying on an overstated drum track. Fine as the vocals and lyrics are, they certainly deserve the back seat to what has elsewhere been described as “a beat harder than the Rock of Gibraltar”. No argument is to be found here.

“The Night Accelerates,” might be mistaken for the most forgettable track on the record the first time through; it simply seems like a poppier, more lifeless version of “Too Small to Fail” at first, repeated listening rewards in spades. Because the problem is, the first time through it is very likely you might miss the turning point of the song, signaled by the best lyrics on the track, possibly the best lyrics that have been penned this year (or any years). At 2:25 in Blake lets off the most soul searching little soliloquy he ever has; it seems disdainful to write it down, given that without the accompaniment of music they just sound like soapboxing, yet that is anything but the truth. Needless to say, it’s a painfully simple and intolerably poignant little passage that works on a viscerally emotional level; there is no kitsch here, no false emotion, just Mr. Schawrzenbach gushing out torrents of himself all the microphone and out of the speakers.

If by the end you’ve found yourself entirely unmoved, it seems there is little reason for you to even try listening to music anymore. Which is fine; not everyone has the ability to discern what is good in life, and vainly trying to appreciate those things beyond you can only result in disappointment. In that case, you’re better off listening to the newest single from whatever tragically hip band it is you enjoy or the shallow styling of some guitar strumming beach bum. But for those of you who appreciate truly fine examples of the punk form, well, you could do infinitely worse than forgetters. It was a sad 8 years that saw you gone, Mr. Schwarzenbach, but if that was what you required to produce a work this fine, then it was more than worth it.

Glad to see that someone still makes music worth listening to.

– Austin Price