Unfun

Upon transferring to the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California at age 16, Adam Pfahler met Blake Schwarzenbach.[1] The pair, plus a mutual friend, formed the band Red Harvest in their first year, eventually breaking up prior to graduation.[2] Following this, Pfahler attended University of Santa Monica, while Schwarzenbach went to University of California, Santa Cruz; Chris Bauermeister, meanwhile, enrolled in New York University (NYU).[3] Bauermeister joined Butcher Clyde after learning they were looking for a bassist, though they broke up during his second year. Shortly after this, Bauermeister opted to form his own band.[4] In late 1986, Pfahler and Schwarzenbach moved to New York to attend NYU, where they learned that Bauermeister was looking for band members.[5] The trio played their first rehearsal together in November 1986 at Giant Studios, which was close to their NYU dorms.[6] They initially went by the name Thumb, before changing it to Terminal Island.[7]

For their first year, they unsuccessfully auditioned lead singers. Shortly afterwards, Pfahler transferred to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); instead of looking for a new drummer, the band continued to meet up and writing songs when breaks in their education allowed. In early 1987, they recorded an instrumental five-track demo tape. While at UCLA, Pfahler drafted in Jon Liu as their singer.[8] Liu was formerly the frontman for Magnolia Thunderpussy, who had previously played a show with Red Harvest.[3] From mid-1988, Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach decided to take a gap year to focus on the band, moving to Los Angeles in the process. During this time, they were going by the name Rise, and by October 1988, they had recorded seven tracks at a studio in Santa Monica. Liu sung vocals on almost every song, bar "Shield Your Eyes", which Schwarzenbach sung on.[9] The following month, after laying down new vocals for "Shield Your Eyes", Bauermeister and Pfahler decided that Schwarzenbach should be their new frontman and let Liu go.[10]

A copy of "Shield Your Eyes" had been sent to the punk publication Maximum Rocknroll, who then played it on their radio station. Shredder Records founder Mel Cheplowitz heard the song and promptly asked the band to contribute to an upcoming various-artist compilation. After learning that there was another band called Rise, they changed their name to Jawbreaker.[11] The World's in Shreds Volume II, which featured "Shield Your Eyes", saw release in February 1989. During the same month, the band recorded a demo tape.[12] In the following weeks, they played at various club venues across Los Angeles.[13] In May and June 1989, they recorded the Whack & Blite EP and "Busy" single with engineer Michael James; both of these would be released through Pfahler's label Blackball Records.[14]

Shortly afterwards, they recorded another demo tape, which featured darker-sounding songs with more of a focus on the bass.[15] Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach returned to NYU for their last year of education, where they would continue to write material.[16] They arranged the songs that feature on their debut album during the Christmas period.[17] In January 1990, the band flew to Los Angeles to record their debut with Richard Andrews, who served as the producer. During the sessions, the band re-recorded several of the songs from their demo tapes, in addition to "Busy". In a retrospective interview, Schwarzenbach said they had "only one way to make Unfun: with limited abilities and unlimited enthusiasm".[18]

Musically, the sound of the album has been described as punk rock,[19][20][21][22] pop-punk,[23][24][25] and hardcore punk,[22] with elements of post-punk.[26] In his 33 1/3 book 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (2018) on the band, Ronen Givony said they sounded "uneven [and] embryonic: a band learning to shake off the weight of their heroes, or figuring out whether they want to sound more like Hüsker Dü, Scratch Acid, or The Jesus Lizard".[8] Discussing the writing process, Bauermeister explained that Schwarzenbach or himself would write a guitar riff, while the other comes up with an additional part; they would then "force Adam to learn it a short period of time".[27] Schwarzenbach said that Pfahler had collectively spent eight days learning all of the material.[28] He estimated that about seven of the tracks were written in his New York apartment.[18] In a 2010 interview, Pfahler said they were "not leaving well enough alone. It's gotta be this much. Like the fills gotta be this much longer and we're playing it this much faster and it's crazy".[29]

With the album's opening track "Want", Givony compared the verse sections to the words of Allen Ginsberg: "the overflowing confession of a bibliophile with too much to say".[16] Schwarzenbach said "Seethruskin" was about the "far reaching racism that is an outgrowth of apathy and classist divisions in schools and neighborhoods".[30] "Imaginary War" incorporates a sample of a scream taken from the film The Warriors (1979).[31] "Busy" sees Schwarzenbach attempting to help a friend that is having a mental breakdown, and is followed by the anti-pornography track "Softcore".[22][32] "Driven" has apocalyptic-themed lyrics, while following track "Wound" tackles guilt and self-doubt.[15][33] In "Gutless", Schwarzenbach ponders if a friend is being true to themselves.[32] "Lawn" details a Raymond Carver-esque scenario where a man watches his family from the afterlife. "Crane" recalls early hardcore punk; "Eye-5" foreshadows some of the sound the band would explore with later albums, Bivouac (1992) and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy (1994).[15] Mischa Pearlman of Louder said it tells the "story of a moralistic garbage truck driver who goes on a shooting spree to cleanse the world of evil-doers in a presumed attempt to ascend to Heaven".[34]

Unfun saw release in May 1990 through Shredder Records;[35] the artwork features a cat named Sammy, which lived with Schwarzenbach and his girlfriend in their New York City apartment. Schwarzenbach explained that he would often rest on the floor while Sammy would be resting on the couch watching him. He "kept thinking, this is really cool looking, he looks larger than life, and there was a certain comic element there as well", and decided to take photographs of Sammy.[30] They promoted it with a ten-week long cross-country trek across North America, which marked their first tour, with Econochrist, between June and September 1990.[18][36][37] Schwarzenbach had booked the tour himself using his father's phone card and a copy of Maximum Rocknroll's guide to venues Book Your Own Fuckin' Life.[18] Schwarzenbach's father had given him the card in the event of emergencies and was in trouble with him afterwards; he reasoned that "everything's an emergency when you're on tour".[38] In hindsight, he said had no concept of "what I was doing – and it shows"; he estimated that they had around six positives shows, with the rest being "maybe 25 utterly forgettable metal-club-in-Florida-type shows".[39]

Jawbreaker largely avoided performing "Busy" during this trek due to it giving Schwarzenbach issues with his throat.[27] Bauermeister said that while it was an exciting experience, it was straining their personal relationships, to the point that he was not talking to Pfahler and Schwarzenbach by the time they had made it to Canada. Though the tour helped establish the band on the national punk touring circuit, tensions between the members saw them break up upon returning home. After this, Bauermeister and Schwarzenbach returned to NYU, which was followed by several months without communication.[39] In 1992, Shredder released the album on CD.[40] At Cheplowitz's suggestion, all of the songs from the Whack & Blite EP were included on these editions. The band agreed, knowing that the EP was out of print at that time.[29] In an interview a few years later, Bauermeister said the label had no interest in re-pressing the album on vinyl as no one was interested in re-pressing Whack & Blite.[41] Shredder Records reissued the CD in digipak packaging in 2002.[42]

In January 2008, Pfahler announced that Unfun would be reissued later in the year; Jon Golden and Pfahler remastered the album the following month.[43] In a subsequent update, Pfahler said the rest of their catalogue would be reissued in due time.[44] According to Pfahler, Golden inspected the master tapes "and he smelled them and he was like, 'Uh-oh this is not gonna do, you gotta go take care of this.'". This prompted the pair to bake the them in order to transfer the audio to a digital format ahead of the remastering.[29] In October 2008, Pfahler said he was returning to the studio to continue working on the remaster as there were "'flutters' in that first pass, which is a techie way of saying that gummy leader tape splices between the songs made the beginnings and endings sound like they had been drinking, which is a longwinded way of saying that it was fucked up."[45][46] Though the plan for this reissue was to be initially a Hot Topic exclusive, this was later dropped.[47] This edition was eventually released on March 30, 2010, adding the 7" mix of "Busy" as a bonus track, which had been left of the band's sole compilation Etc. (2002).[29][48][49] The booklet includes all of the artwork relating to Whack & Blite, as well as photographs of the band recording the album.[29] Blackball Records has since re-pressed it on vinyl in 2015 and 2022.[50][51]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[33]
Pitchfork	7.7/10[22]
Punknews.org	[52]
Record Collector	[53]

Reviewers were receptive to the album's sound. Jim Testa of Trouser Press wrote that the album served as a "rousing alternative to the testosterone-fueled thrash of '80s hardcore, proving that catchy pop-punk could provide the same intensity of feeling and spirit".[54] Kelso Jacks of CMJ New Music Report noted that the album's "pop hooks melded with a coursing intensity. That Combination allowed Jawbreaker to spit and kick while still artfully wearing its heart on its sleeve".[55] Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Charlie Doherty said throughout Unfun, the listener "hear[s] Jawbreaker’s raw and hard-driving sound, and for most tracks, it makes for memorable material".[32] Pitchfork contributor Brian wrote that the alum shows the band's "conviction that punk could open up to pop while staying hardcore [as it] burns more urgently than ever, in the retrospective light of futility".[22] Reviewing the remaster, Punknews.org staff writer Brian Shultz said it "seems to add a little more 'pop' to the overall mix; the percussive nuances are more distinct as well".[52] Writing in 2018, Givony praised the production as it enabled the band to begin "approximating the band they would become" on subsequent releases.[18]

Critics also praised Schwarzenbach's lyrics. Andy Greenwald, author of Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo (2003), felt that the lyricism had made Jawbreaker stand out from their North Californian peers.[25] AllMusic reviewer Mike DaRonco wrote that the band "provides fitting background [music] to the personal side that they're not afraid to show".[33] Record Collector writer Mischa Pearlman called it the band's "most straightforward" release, "yet still displays the fierce intelligence that elevated the band above the majority – if not all – of their punk contemporaries".[53] Michael Nelson of Stereogum said the songs were "almost universally miserable, but the lyrics were so specific and quotably clever that they proved more validating than depressing, while the arrangements [...] were positively cathartic".[56] Treble writer Ernest Simpson said that if he had heard Schwarzenbach's "thoughtful lyrics paired with the powerhouse trio’s unpredictable and juggernaut song structures [earlier in his life], my head would have exploded".[57]

Citations

Sources

• Unfun at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)
• Interview about the 2010 reissue at Giant Robot