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 the 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. Kyle Ryan of The A.V. 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". Schwarzenbach and Lance Hahn of Cringer would talk about writing songs often; Hahn and Jawbreaker would hang out and listen to music together, which Schwarzenbach said would find its way into their songs. 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". 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". In contrast to the band's later releases which were entirely written by Schwarzenbach, Bivouac has been described as Jawbreaker's "most collaborative" album. The lyrics to "Sleep", "P.S. New York Is Burning" and "Like a Secret" were written by Bauermeister, while "Parabola" was a collaborative effort between all three band members. Narrative samples are heard in three of the album's tracks, namely "Donatello" (from The Twilight Zone), "Like a Secret" and "Bivouac"; Pfahler said the instrumental sections that the samples were laid over were influenced by Bitch Magnet and Sonic Youth. The album's title, Bivouac, was taken from the sample used in "Bivouac", which was from a nature documentary on ant colonies. Pfahler explained that the narrator discusses bivouacs: "temporary encampments that the ants build out of their living bodies to protect the queen. We thought it apt, as our move to S.F. felt a bit like a bivouac". Tracks A re-recorded version of "Shield Your Eyes" starts Bivouac, fading in after 15 seconds of droning. An earlier version of it had been included on a various-artist compilation that their previous label, Shredder Records, had released in 1989. The song describes a person choosing to stare at a sidewalk instead of looking directly at the sun to risk