Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

The past looms on the back of a record sleeve. Labels, such as, Lookout, Epitaph, even Bomp, cryptically allowing for years of wasted moments. The times that your finger tips traced the edge of an LP or slammed your fist against fragile drywall. You marveled at the pictures on the back of each sleeve, somehow they were more real than your own family members. They spoke through each lyric, each guitar line, each drum fill, each chord change -- so goddamn directly to you. A slipped power pop backbone, a hardcore frustration, a mod moment, a Dischord emo relapse. The emotions bubbled over into a potent stew of remembrance and forget, lost in transition as the records and years slipped quietly away. They were replaced by other records, other ideas. But the intent is the same, a slipping away into the night, a creative outlet or an escape from yourself and the world. The past looms on the back of a record sleeve, as surely as the present looms in the smile lines of your face -- a crow's...

"Cooling Card" contains all the tricks that made Jawbox such an indie powerhouse -- interesting chord changes, J. Robbin's sputtering vocals, chiming guitars, and ever-cryptic lyrics. The lyrics are always filled with imagery, often obtuse or near impenetrable. Robbins begins the song with the lovely and poetic, "Fear as a friend I wish I never kissed / Fading hand to mouth as catalyst / Technicolor static sender / Second guess my love for danger / Bold-face it with a hand of 10 by 10" over chunky guitar chords, and the song only spirals from there. Much of the fun of listening to Jawbox lies in trying to decipher the lyrics and marvelling at the band's near pop song melodies. At the time it seemed strange that they signed to a major label, Atlantic, before any of their fiercely independent Dischord label mates, yet listening now, with the hindsight of years, it is easy to see how they were snatched up in the post-Nirvana blitzkrieg. Intricate songwriting...