There’s not a lot of post-hardcore bands left these days. I think we’re in a post post phase or some such. But as a genre in the 90s post hardcore was pretty unstoppable. That was till bans like Helmet, Quicksand, and Jawbox jumped their respective indie ships and went major label. I can say with great certainty that this act in and of itself never bothered me. And it never stopped my liking them. It’s when bands changed or compromised that pissed me off. In the case of Jawbox their best (in my un-humble opinion) album was their uncompromising major label debut “For Your Own Special Sweetheart”. I’d feel this way about it no matter who put it out. If you didn’t buy it then cause you were too punk rock to give your money to Atlantic Records I’m not going to tell you to buy it now that it’s back with Dischord where the band first started. I’m not going to tell you to buy it now cause fuck you. You should ‘a bought it then. You blew your opportunity. If I see your ass in my record store trying to purchase this I’m coming for you. For reals. I’ve enjoyed this album for the last 15 years along with a lot of other people. A LOT of other people. And along with a lot of other people when I heard it was being reissued and that Jawbox would be playing Fallon on December 8th I got excited. Genuinely excited. This doesn’t happen often these days for me. Bands get back together all the time. Albums get reissued more often that new albums get released. And yet as I sat at my desk at work and read the news I was excited. (editor’s note: If you turned your back on them in 1994 you don’t deserve to get excited with me.) I immediately, immediately sought out a friend of mine with some NBC connections to see about getting me and brother P tickets. I was jumping out of my skin when I got word we were in. But you…naysayer… if I see you at Fallon next week I’m coming for you. That’s double real.
If however you’ve never heard of Jawbox or never got around to listening to them or couldn’t readily come by this album after it went out of print or lost your copy somewhere along the way or somehow confused them with Jawbreaker (more common than you’d think), run, don’t walk, run out and pick this up. Dischord and DeSoto did a bang up job with all new artwork, high grade RTI vinyl, a remastered sound from the original source tapes, and a download code that gives you the full album plus 3 bonus tracks. If you’ve never heard Savory you are doing yourself a disservice, if you’ve heard it and want to hear it again for the first time all over again get this vinyl. It was a pseudo-hit for the band then and with good reason. Regardless of a major label push that song was/is fucking killer. That jangly guitar will forever be etched in my mind as one of my all time favorite riffs. Unlike many 90s albums that had similar pseudo-hits “FYOSS” is not a vehicle for a one-hit-wonder though. It’s filled to the brim all kinds of hardcore goodness from beginning to end. I started listing all the other tracks I love on it and realized I was listing them all so I stopped. Yeah, it’s that good. Listening to it now it’s definitely a product of the 90s, but in all the best ways. It makes me look back fondly on those years. It couldn’t have been recorded in any other decade. I don’t know why but I associate this album with the summer. If I psychoanalyze “why” it’d probably be because those where the times when I was happiest when I was coming up. Sitting around with friends, smoking cigarettes, broke, not a girl in sight, listening to music, and being genuinely inspired by it. Inspired in a way that made music a great focal point in my life from that point on. Albums like this remind me of that inspiration and get me excited all over again.
Sometimes it’s hard to put into words why an album that you hold really dear to your heart means so much to you. Sometimes you don’t even fully understand why yourself. Maybe it just came along at the exact perfect moment in time. But I think all of you reading this right now know what I’m talking about. I think all of you reading this right now can rattle off a couple of your own. So for this reason I want to share my love of this album with you. I hope you feel the same way after listening to it that I always do when I listen to it. If you’re a fan of it already I hope you got excited when you heard the news it was coming back out and that the band would be out playing again (even if only once). And like I said before if you couldn’t be bothered with this album in 1994 stay away from it now too. You lost your chance. The FSS though, we’ll be front and center next Tuesday smiling ear to ear as J, Kim, Zach, and Bill take the stage after all these years. We’ll be sure to let you know our thoughts then, but feel free to watch that night and hit up our Wall and Comments section with your own. And if you’re just getting “FYOSS” now let us know what you think about it. We hope you feel the same way we do.
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