Pennsylvania-based outfit Pissed Jeans would appear, on first encounter,to be as confrontational as their name. Listen longer and harder, though,and all is not as it might initially seem.
Aurally, the band have a deserved reputation, acquired over the releaseof their two previous full length albums, as back-to-basics unreconstructednoise peddlars. The sludgy production of Dream Smotherer, Request forMasseuse, and Spent, for example, combined with some heavy-duty riffage(there is a distinct identifying riff that one can pick out on nearly everytrack), serious shrieks of feedback (Pleasure Race, Human Upskirt, DominateYourself) and periodic psychedelic guitar wigouts (most notably on HumanUpskirt, but also found on Dream Smotherer, Request for Masseuse, andDominate Yourself) all position the band as a kind of noughties version ofMelvins-style grunge/rock.
On some tracks, like opener False Jesii Part 2 and Human Upskirt, thevocal delivery, too, is laconic, growled or sludgy to the point ofindecipherability. Often you are left to just deduce from the ire-filleddelivery that this is a band that is clearly royally hacked off with life(Half Idiot). Elsewhere, thought, the lyrics are clearer – and it is herethat an interesting contrast begins to emerge. Juxtaposed against the dramaand sometimes pantomime-menace of the music and delivery, are some reallysimple, even quite banal tales of everyday life.
Take Spent, for example,wherein singer Matt Korvette complains that “I slept for eight hours / Andwoke up tired”, and “I drank a cold glass of water / But it didn’t satisfy”.Later, R-Rated Movie sees him going to see the aforementioned film, which,we are told, was “much more exciting than the rest of my day”, and theentire closing track Goodbye (Hair) is dedicated to bemoaning premature hairloss, in a funny, and really quite endearing way (“When it’s time to saygoodbye I’ll say it with a frown / Find it hard to look my best when it’sall falling out”.
Ultimately, then, it is this contrast between the mundanity of theeveryday life, personal vanities and dissatisfactions of a bunch ofself-styled “young adults” and the terrific roar and hyperbole of theirdirty, dark riff-laden music that provides the neat twist in Pissed Jeans’tail and gives this album its extra frisson.
Pissed Jeans MP3s or CDs
Pissed Jeans on Spotify
