Dear You is the fourth studio album by American punk rock band Jawbreaker, released on September 12, 1995, through DGC Records. While promoting their third studio album 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1994), Jawbreaker was approached by a representative from Geffen Records. After securing management, they had meetings with various label representatives, before circling back to Geffen. Eventually, they signed to them and started recording their major label debut at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, with producer Rob Cavallo. While bassist Chris Bauermeister and drummer Adam Pfahler recorded their respective parts within a few days, frontman Blake Schwarzenbach did his parts over six weeks in February and March 1995.
Mainly described as an emo, and punk rock album, Dear You returns to the darker sound of Jawbreaker's second album Bivouac (1992). Cavallo had given the album its thick sound by layering three different guitar tones from Schwarzenbach, whose playing style was anchored on open-string parts. The lyrics largely revolve around the aftermath of the relationship that was the inspiration for 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. Others, such as "Save Your Generation" and "Chemistry", deal with slacker culture and attending school, respectively. Unlike previous releases, Dear You sees Schwarzenbach sing more instead of scream. His vocals evoked Morrissey, while the overall band was compared to the work of Green Day, Jawbox, and Nirvana.
Dear You was met with generally favorable reviews from music critics, many of whom praised the album's sound and highlighted the lyrics. It peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart in the United States. There, it sold 40,000 copies by 2002. "Fireman" was released as the album's lead single in August 1995. Jawbreaker then embarked on the Monsters of Jaw tour with Jawbox, where they were met with hostility from the audience who did not like the band's choice to go with a major label. They toured Australia as part of the Summersault festival. "Accident Prone" was released as the next single by April 1996, which was promoted with a supporting slot for the Foo Fighters. Following a fist fight between Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach, Jawbreaker announced their break up in July 1996.
Jawbreaker's fanbase was not receptive to Dear You at the time of its release, criticizing the album's production. The decision to sign with a major label overtook the album's content, becoming the narrative that dominated the press. Following the band's demise, fan perception of the album shifted to a positive one, as the album became an influence on the next wave of emo and pop-punk artists, such as on My Chemical Romance, Saves the Day, and Thrice. Many Dear You songs featured on tribute albums in the ensuing years, and several publications included it on best–of emo album lists from the likes of Kerrang!, NME, and Rolling Stone. After going out of print, Pfahler's label Blackball Records reissued it in 2004. Jawbreaker eventually embarked on a celebratory tour of the album in 2022.
I did not know Jawbreaker while I'm a fan of early 1990s punk rock. The sound is a bit like Green Day (same producer as Dookie) and the song style is similar to The Offspring (melodic punk rock). Too bad the songs and performance (vocals) are subpar compared to these two bands.
Between this, "You'd Prefer an Astronaut" and "White Pony", I'm starting to think that it was a government mandate to put a equine animal on your album cover if you were making a shoegazey post-hardcore album in the late 90s.
It's good. 3/5.
I struggle to differentiate between any of this American punky-pop stuff, all seems a bit insubstantial to me. Is this better than Blink182 et al?. Possibly, but it's a low bar.
Albums rarely get better the further in you get. So that's pretty impressive. Started out like "Ooh it's another of those bands Dave Grohl had made millions copying. Ends so much better than that offhand review. Thoughtful,.lyrical, angular.
I'm sure I'd have enjoyed this album much more if I had listened to it 10 or 15 years ago.
Listening to it in 2026 makes it too outdated to be considered a great album, but it's obviously influential and important for the pop-punk and emo bands that came later. We got it from the music and from the great information on the Wikipedia page (one of the most complete ones).
To me, it's always nice to discover these bands with such a capacity of being ahead of their time.
Solid punk, I can definitely see how this laid the groundwork for the pop-punk/emo renaissance to come. The tracks did start to feel a bit homogeneous halfway through, but the secret weapon of this album is its heavily overdriven (vs. distorted) guitar that’s a joy to listen to so I didn’t mind.
At first I was kind of, meh, reminds me a bit of the Foo Fighters brand of bland pseudo-punk. But the more I got into it, the more I liked it. 3 stars.
I feel like the punk to hardcore to emo pipeline needs to be studied, with the ultimate aim of explaining Radiohead. This was all right, a little mopy.
Sometimes being too early can be a bad thing. The garage punk rock sound that flourished in the late 90s/early 00s was one of the most energetic sounds in music. This jawbreaker album is in of that sound with a little emo rock in there that came ahead of the bands that became significantly more popular. This album is very solid and considerably underrated when compared to its counter parts. 6.7/10
I've tried to listen to this one a couple of times, and it just makes no impression on me. Not bad at all, since I do love some mid-90s punk, but it's not the most interesting example of this era
3/5
Dear You was pretty good, took a while to get going but by the excellent Accident Prone I was right into the melodic slightly dark punk rock, the overdrive creating this atmospheric feel that gives the whole record that pathos the lyrics are searching for. It's maybe a little bit too post-rock for my overall preferences but it was really good in and of itself, shoutout Oyster and Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault. High 3, maybe a 4 if it grew on me.
I should like this one on paper. I've heard of this nineties act because their name is so close to the one of Jawbox (turns out they toured together). The album starts very well for the genre, with four melodic punk tracks à la Hüsker Dü that are not only only efficient but also have interesting chord modulations once in a while. The vocals lack a bit of personality, but it's not necessarily a deal-breaker by this early point. It's very "early-nineties" stuff, but for an album released in 1995, that first leg still feels committed to what was going on in so-called "grunge" / alt-rock circles at the time. "I Love You So Much But It's Killing Us Both" and "Fireman" are good songs. "Accident Prone" also explores longer and more stretched out Chokebore turf that still manages to make sense pasted next to the faster songs -- a turf Jawbreaker return to from time to time during the course of the tracklist, by the way.
Unfortunately, *Dear You* clearly loses steam and momentum after that fourth song. The chords are too often bland, just like the vocal performance, and the music writing becomes complacent as fuck. Interestingly, a lot of later pseudo-"emo" acts I loathe apparently took inspiration from this record, so I could even blame the latter for the stupid dross they inflicted rock audiences during the noughts -- "emo and pop-punk artists, such as on My Chemical Romance, Saves the Day, and Thrice", says Wikipedia. Thanks for nothing really. "Jet black" is the only great cut in the second half of the album, thanks to an intensity that's crucially lacking elsewhere.
It was very interesting reading what happened to the band after they released this record through a major label after years of being independent -- quite a bitter story of disillusionment and internal strife, in spite of their later reformation to celebrate "Dear You" as a "cult album" a couple of years ago. I remember Sonic Youth, who had made the same move to Geffen five years earlier, warning indie-rock bands they shouldn't follow their steps now that the "alt- rock" explosion was dying its slow death. Fugazi, who never compromised with majors themselves, predicted this as well. Jawbreaker should have listened to those more seasoned acts.
To be clear, I'm not merely half-roasting Jawbreaker because they signed to a major label -- tons of acts that I love ended up doing it. It's just that for me, it seems this situation didn't help the band get a grip on what what was truly going on around them. When I read how much money the recording of *Dear You* cost, and how long it took its frontman to record his vocals and guitar parts (while the rhythm section half-botched their studio performance in a few days -- which is for me CLEARLY audible here), this screams "industrial accident" to my ears. It's also crazy that the producer who recorded Green Day's *Dookie* made such an unremarkable job here. Many albums that were recorded in that era using far less money sound so much better. The sound of this thing is so flat at times... It really feels that everyone involved in the label who thought Jawbreaker could become the next Nirvana with this record had very poor instincts and listening abilities. This record is not "bad" by any means -- I even really hate the fact that Pitchfork rated it with a 2.something review *twice* in ten tears, it feels so petty and unnecessary. But overall, I would tend to agree that the music in this record tends to come off as either derivative or uninspired. Interesting to discover for me. But certainly not "1001 albums..." fodder.
2.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 3.
7.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2.5)
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Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465
Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288
Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336
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Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 79
Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 98
Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 196 (including this one)
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Émile, tu trouveras ma dernière réponse sous le *Inside* de Bo Burnham
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