Big Jaw

Photophobia

Joel Frieders | October 18, 2014

BEFORE WE BEGIN BRO.

SCROLL DOWN AND HIT PLAY BRO.

YOU FEEL THAT IN YOUR UNDERCARRIAGE BRO?

Whoever the fuck Big Jaw are, they have fucking rock testicles with fucking wifi they're so perfectly welcome in my face holes.

JESUS BALLS ON A TURQUOISE CORSICA I WANT TO DRINK TECATE AND SPIN IN CIRCLES WHILE A CLEARANCE AISLE SPRINKLER SPRINKLES ME WITH WELL WATER TASTING WATER DROPLETS THAT REMIND ME OF OVERSEAS TRAVEL AND STOMACH UPSET.

Big Jaw starts their six track album, Photophobia, with such insanely massive riffage, it's a wonder I even got past the first thirty seconds let alone the first fucking song. This shit feels like Foo Fighters gang raping the Black Keys while Helmet's Betty album spins in the background and everyone's got those Black Hole Sun melty faces happenin' bro. You can smell the sex in the air.

Big Jaw is fucking b'dass, bro bro.

My taste for bar chord driven, unwashed long hair twirling distortion wanes on occasion, I mean I can't always wear these studded leather cuffs bro. But, shit, I am so fucking thankful that my waning was wiped away by the wane wipers in Big Jaw. The rock fists this band shoves in its weathered denim vest pockets are swol bro. Full of cuts and scrapes, with finger hairs the width of lawn darts. They look like they're perpetually chewing toothpicks bro, even while sleeping, which they never do because the fuzz is on their tail bro. Mothers shield their children's eyes from the likes of Big Jaw, with their sexual energy broadcast like a Scotts lawn spreader spreads fertilizer bro. And if you look close enough, those little fertilizer pellets are little skulls bro.

It's so bad ass it's fucking adorable.

The entire Photophobia album is a perfect modern Alice In Chains with a 6 month sobriety chip. It's aware of its past, is making steps to right done wrongs, but it's tough out there for early 90's alternative rock meets Dazed and Confused Original Motion Picture Soundtrack meets Sons of Anarchy casting call meets declaring zero on your tax return living a life on the run bro.

Do I really need to type any more words to make you shove five fucking dollars in the taut rear, ripped jeans pocket of Big Jar bro?

I didn't think so.

I just have a few more sentences and then you can get to spendin' bro.

UM, BUT YEAH SOMETHING HAPPENS WHEN THE FIFTH SONG STARTS THO.

"Calling Out" bro.

Imagine this burly rush of pochards all sitting on their respective Indians or Harleys parked outside a random diner, with its pink neon sign flickering EAT with no particular rhythm, the sun setting in the north (THIS IS TATOOINE BRO, THERE IS NO LOGIC IN THIS COSMOS BROSMOS), a slight breeze rustles the greasy manes of the Big Jawans, drifting listlessly in front of their still-sunglassed ojos brojos. The leader of the Big Jawans nods to another man in similar cultural dress, but with bushier brows of eye, and he starts singing something that immediately grabs you by the theatrical testicles AND THEN EVERYONE BREAKS OUT INTO THREE PART HARMONIES ON LIKE THE POWER-POP AFTERNOON DELIGHT SURPRISE OF THE FUCKING CENTURY.

If you were with me, back in the diner, fisting down some fucking bluebrry flapjacks (yea, bluebrry, I know a guy from the British bro), and you were staring at these menaces (menaci?) to society, you would drop your fork bro. Bluebrry flapjacks, half chewed, would fall out of your agasp fucking front face hole.

Out of fucking nowhere Big Jaw is on par for arena tour pop music stardom, BUT THEN HALFWAY THROUGH IT GOES ALL ELECTRO WITH THESE TASTY SAMPLES AND OVERLAYERED DRUMS. THE SONG GOES FROM HUGE TO HUGER BRO. And then it pulls a Thom Yorke dance meant to give you a percussion concussion, and then towards the last minute it's all of a sudden Muse live in concert and my hands are interlocked behind my neck, with a confused yet satisfied look on my face.

And then if you weren't already confused enough by my synopsis of the musical traipse that is Photophobia, the final track on the album, "Light" is this spectacularly introspective missive to longing. This shit feels like the song that plays while you board a bus in the middle of nowhere and head towards the back, find your seat against the window, and then holding your army green duffel bag on your lap you put your head against the glass and watch the yellow stripes gallop along, the reflection of power lines the only peripheral inclination of any steady pace of forward momentum.

BIG JAW HAS LEFT ME COMPLETELY, and welcomely, CONFUSED.

I fucking love this shit. It's like the WB-aired episode of that one show that everyone watched in junior high, and they're discussing the topic of herpes.

What?

WHY THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?

YOU DON'T HEAR THE HERP?

Whatever.