Bivouac is the second studio album by American punk rock band Jawbreaker, released through Tupelo Recording Company and The Communion Label on December 1, 1992.

The sessions were held at Razor's Edge in San Francisco, California, with Jawbreaker, Billy Anderson, Mike Morasky, and Jonathan Burnside all getting producer credit.

Categorized as an emo, punk rock, and pop-punk release, it had elements of the work of Helmet, Naked Raygun, and early Smashing Pumpkins, and took influence from the Midwestern and Washington, D.C. post-punk scenes.

After a few months, frontman Blake Schwarzenbach started suffering from throat issues; while touring in Europe, he underwent surgery in London to remove a polyp that had formed on his vocal cords.

The album has been seen as an important release for the emo genre by LA Weekly and Spin, while "Chesterfield King" has been included on a list of the 100 best pop-punk songs by Cleveland.com.

Jawbreaker initially was placed halfway into bills upwards of six bands until the growth of their audience saw them play headlining gigs in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, California, in addition to Seattle, Washington.

[8] Journalist Dan Ozzi, in his book Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore 1994–2007 (2021), said they stood out from the local pop-punk acts and the roster of Berkeley label Lookout Records as the members were a bit "older, a little more collegiate.

"[8] Ozzi also said Jawbreaker's initial time in the Bay Area coincided with the conclusion of a period of integrity for independently made rock music.

[15] Musically, the sound of Bivouac has been described as emo,[16][17][18] punk rock,[19][20][21] and pop-punk,[17][22] with elements of the work of Helmet, Naked Raygun, and early Smashing Pumpkins.

He explained that Bivouac was a "set of sprawling, complex, deep-sea epics; angry, paranoid howls of despair; mournful, world-weary funeral dirges; and vivid, multipart revenge fantasies".

Schwarzenbach equated the album's sound to the work of Bob Mould, Mike Ness of Social Distortion, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads, Sinéad O'Connor, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum.

Club wrote that the band took influence from the Midwestern and Washington, D.C. post-punk scenes with the "angular rhythms, propulsive bass, noisy guitars, and a pronounced dark streak.

[26] The Free Lance–Star writer Brendan Fitzgerald said it was a lyrically "dark and aggressive" album that conveys "faithlessness and despair, punctuated with plateaus of romantic rejoicing".

[16] Andy Greenwald, author of Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo (2003), wrote that the lyrics were taken from Schwarzenbach's diaries, which saw the focus shift towards him: "The attraction then was to the songwriter; it wasn't the song that the listeners related to, it was the singer".

[37][38] Arin Keeble, in his piece on Jawbreaker collected in The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature (2022), said it delivered a short story that recalled the realistic edge of writers such as Alice Munro and Raymond Carver.

[39] Mischa Pearlman of Louder said after this exchange, he "pits the folly and freedom of youth against the experience and wisdom of age, while also confronting the human mortality head on".

[20][21] AllMusic reviewer Fred Thomas described it as "dialing in the swirling basslines and big grunge choruses with beat poet-inspired lyrics aiming to reconcile Holden Caulfield-esque displacement and alienation from immediate family.

[51] Jawbreaker held a meeting and decided that Reyes could stand in for Schwarzenbach for the remainder of the tour and potentially for the first two weeks of an upcoming European trek.

[45] Around this time, the publication Spin ran a feature in its August 1992 issue, highlighting various acts from the punk scene in San Francisco, which included Green Day, Jawbreaker, and Samiam.

[45] Pfahler attributed the delay to Held holding it back in order to sell off all of the copies of the "Chesterfield" twelve-inch vinyl, in addition to the time it took to create the artwork.

The cover of the CD release is a portion of the image showing the band name and album title; the full drawing is revealed when the insert is unfolded.

[63] Thomas called it "easily their stormiest, gruffest material";[21] Melissa Fossum of Phoenix New Times said that the "super-dense" musicality made it "one of the hardest albums to get into, but it's great in the context of Jawbreaker.

Jim Testa of Trouser Press noted that while it dropped the "playful brightness" of their debut, Bivouac continued their "formula of literate, well-crafted pop songs filled with unpredictable breaks and changes.

"[66] Brandon Stosuy of Pitchfork said it was their "darkest collection, a sprawling, shaggy-dog set that found them transitioning from the cleaner, calmer Unfun to something grittier, wilder, and smarter.

"[49] Author Barry M. Prickett, writing in MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (1999), was enthralled by the "longer, passionate epics that never drag" on Bivouac, as opposed to the "shorter, tighter compositions" that made up Unfun.

[62] Alternative Press writer Vivianne Oh said that the album showcases a band "progressing with tunes that crackle with alienation and burning chunks of aggressive guitar", highlighting Schwarzenbach's growth as a lyricist.

[33] In the aftermath of Bivouac's release, Greenwald wrote that Schwarzenbach's charisma as a frontman "helped establish Jawbreaker as a national touring act"; in addition to this, the band, with their "dominant voice and searingly personal POV, produced emo's first idol".

[33] Joe Gross of Spin said that Bivouac and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy were "two of early emo's key documents";[18] editors Cindy Dell Clark and Simon J. Bronner expressed a similar statement in Youth Cultures in America (2016).

[71] Chaz Kangas of Spectrum Culture wrote that Jawbreaker provided a specific sound in "such a way that contemporary bands still have an audible chunk of the album in their collective DNA.

"[19] Ryan said that in the ensuing years, Jawbreaker subverted the darker edge of Bivouac with the brighter-sounding 24 Hour Revenge Therapy and returned to it on Dear You (1995) without the ambitious songwriting.