Crashlaning in Carrboro

Sometimes it gets late at night, and you're alone, and you're still melting from the summer heat or shivering off the night air, and you miss somebody. Maybe you don't even miss anybody yet-maybe you want them gone. Maybe you shed a tear or two, or stare at your feet kicking listlessly at the air. You're having a moment, sad and impenetrably elliptical, because you can't hear yourself over your own thoughts.

And just that moment, Four Cornered Night might be that voice you're not able to form in your own throat. And at just that moment, you need to realize why you should never, ever get cynical about the power of rock n' roll.

Though it's only Jets to Brazil's second release, Four Cornered Night can't rightfully be called a sophomore album. The band is culled from some of the brighter names of the early to mid-90s, including Chris Daly of Texas is the Reason and Jeremy Chatelain of Handsome.

And then there's former Jawbreaker frontman Blake Schwarzenbach, still the lyrical force that propelled that band into the hearts of punk fans everywhere. With the Jets, Schwarzenbach's direct appeals are more fully recognized, stripped of some of Jawbreaker's noise but not the angst. In fact, for a man to still be writing lines like, "So I got stoned / Until I thought this house a home / But when I came down / I found myself alone" after over ten years in music makes you wonder how he can still have so much catharsis left to channel.

This album leaves little room for dulled senses. Its appeals come clear and direct and simple, perching you just on melancholy's brink. Schwarzenbach's lyrics are bleak enough to break your heart in fifteen seconds and clean enough for you to understand him in half that. There's no room here for the oblique and pretentious. It's maddeningly refreshing, a tonic to thousands of Billy Corgan's über-metaphorical ramblings. Other singers need astrophysics to describe the tension of a wilting relationship. Schwarzenbach needs less and gets more:

"When you say my name to me / Like some amusing piece of food between your teeth / Then I will know it's completely over / Won't you say my name to me?"

Still, Four Cornered Night transcends Jawbreaker's simple pop-punk, or even the gradual evolution of Jets to Brazil's first outing, Orange Rhyming Dictionary. Here, the Jets rewrite the rules. An unabashed anthemic streak runs through almost every track; the band skirts perilously close to Bad Company territory when the keyboards kick in. But the touch is light enough, the words deft and sure.

And the night's brittle moment, sketched piecemeal from a day's ups and downs and a year's worth of memories, is waiting for the sound of someone who understands.