It’s the kind of show that could truly break the internet. A bill so audacious, so legendary, we dared not speak its name in the daytime, though true believers whispered about the possibility of its existence it in the bathroom lines of many a DIY venue. On an unassuming Tuesday in Kingston, New York, bridging two generations of punks with the radiant power of a solid gig, Jawbreaker Reunion will play a show with former Jawbreaker frontman Blake Schwarzenbach.
It’s not an actual Jawbreaker reunion, to be fair. The band has been more or less dormant since their split in the late nineties. Schwarzenbach went on to make music with Jets to Brazil, the Thorns of Life, and, most recently, the Forgetters, keeping up poetic songwriting but progressively mellowing out, as people do. Contrary to oddly persistent rumors of a Salinger-esque disappearance, he has stayed around, playing occasional solo gigs and even releasing a new track earlier this summer.
Meanwhile, by virtue of their name being a winking jab at punk rock sacred cows, Jawbreaker Reunion has been passively trolling legions of nineties stalwarts while actively making witty self-aware life-affirming pop punk about relationships, friendship, anxiety, and empowerment that speaks seriously to a college-age population that might need to google the reference. Jawbreaker Reunion has earned a growing fanbase entirely of their own accord, but there’s always something poetically just, something beautifully 2k15, about reading irate messages from people who thought they were following their nostalgia only to be “tricked” into seeing a feminist band singing about the politics of jeggings.
It’s all going down at BSP Kingston on September 15. See you at the gig.
