If I have one major complaint about modern alternative rock and punk is that it just doesn't know how to make our internal conflicts sound cool anymore. Every song about an encounter with ambivalence or a brush with guilt is framed with a hint of sadness or distress, like being confused about your emotions and your role in life is a character flaw rather than a persistent state of the human condition. Bands like Polvo, Veruca Salt, the Pixies (and on and on and on...) all thrived at the point where the whirlwind inside us breached the surface of one's composer in a tide of lionized confusion, and the '90s in general was a golden era for exalting the tensions that color one's consciousness and torment the conscience in exciting and relatable ways. NYC's Jobber is a good example of this aesthetic in our current moment- a punk band with a muscular physique and soft interior, who cast a sweet set of melodies into the lingering cusp of riffs that rip like bear claws, and whose debut EP Hell in a Cell is literally and metaphorically about wrestling. In all its forms! Whether that be the attempts to dam the crushing flood of emotions that sweep through us each day, the fight many of us endure for a sense of dignity at our jobs, or the literal (nonmetaphorical) joy many of us take in the theater of thespian combat that is pro wrestling. The band's name is even a reference to someone who is hired to lose a match. Let that sink in. This is a band that sounds like a combination of Helium, that dog. and The Rentals who is named for someone whose job it is to get their ass handed to them for your amusement. It's a peak synergy of content and form. A name for someone who is humiliated for a living serving as the title and marquee for art about being humiliated by the conditions of your life and which pays partial homage to people who recite soap opera dialog in their underwear on TV. The lyrics reflect these conditions too; brooding while navigating one's workplace and its "hall of hate," anticipating fresh bad news like a "40 ft drop," being a "heavyweight of indecision" forced to "consort with adversaries," and enduring the daily irritation of witnessing people with fake jobs wielding real and definite power over your life and well being. It's enough to make anyone want to drop the People's Elbow on their supervisor! But what's really astounding about the album is that Jobber is able to make such plebian straits powerful and ascendant, like their subject is actually the protagonist in a contest of righteous purpose, set loose in a theatrical labyrinth stocked with bullying marketing minotaur, micromanagement traps, and Satanic priests dispatched from the Temple of VC Viceroys- a pitched battle demarcated by rage, petty skirmishes, and uncertain chances for survival, and endured for the honor of doing it again the next day. Making the depths of this ambiguity sound important, and dare I say fun and meaningful (!) is the final test of Jobber's strength. A test they pass, by the way! Consequently, Hell in a Cell becomes the wooshing sense of triumph that fills your ears as you descend from the tight ropes into the fray, knowing that even if the mass of torment you've dropped into can claim your body and mind, it can never take from you the conviction of spirit that you were never meant to be fodder for other's benefit. After all, every hold they put you in can be reversed once you learn their tricks. In the meantime, you can learn to inhabit the ambiguity of your situation like an underdog face angling for their chance to shitcan whoever is running this circus. Also, Mankind has a cameo on the opening track. That alone should qualify Hell in a Cell as an all-time champ!
