If there’s one certainty in life, it’s that in the year 2076, when the world is a utopian paradise and all existential threats have been remedied, one guy will still be out there. You know the one. Everyone will be joyously riding emission-free silver air taxis to work, and homeboy will be sitting there glowering as the sun shines on pristine soybean fields, a hologram of an ax slowly grinding on a whetstone flickering over his head. He’ll be pissed off about a band who, in his eyes, has sold out.
Pissed Jeans were recently on the receiving end of the kind of bug-up-ass screed that’s been around since man first rocked out. Honeys is their first release in four years, and it seems that they’ve found their ticket to widespread renown, with a cover story for City Paper and reviews across the globe, even (complete with hilariously prim censoring) in BBC Music. Of course, someone was going to get angry at them for sullying an imagined mantle of punk rock. How dare they take the sounds of misanthropic nineties idols to the masses! How dare they get themselves signed to Sub Pop! How dare they not write songs using the official Punk Rock Word Bank! How dare they be courteous, good-natured family men making evil songs about TV dinners!
It’s unfortunate that Disgruntled Letter Writer has written Pissed Jeans off, because Matt Korvette and company, aside from being legitimately decent guys, are maybe more punk rock when they’re chronicling the sordid, mundane rites of their day than some bands are when they’re screaming about street living in a South Philly basement.
“Bathroom Laughter” is a fanged, rabid creature of an opener, now impossible to hear without picturing the insane, hilarious video that has changed the way people watch the Home Shopping Network forever. The following track “Chain Worker” sounds musically like they’re lying in wait, plotting their next attack, but lyrically it goes right for the viscera: a grim number about living life as an office drone, complete with crying alcohol-induced tears of blood. Jesus.
“Romanticize Me” has something of Dead Kennedys’ demented, acidic rants, but bludgeoned into a deadpan, lumbering sludge-rock crawl underscoring Korvette’s insistence that his lady should be grateful when he blearily suggests they get it on. The sleazy delight of “Loubs” might make Christian Louboutin kind of nervous, since it’s doubtful he would want his brand associated with our heroes, but somehow I doubt that this one is going to trigger an Apple Bottom Jeans-style bump in sales. Here, the iconic red-soled high heels are the object of lust for Korvette, a seedy flack trying to give his girl a lavish future; one day, if he’s smart about saving and planning, they’ll walk into the store, and he’ll buy her the titular shoes that will be her ticket to happiness. It’s like the world’s scuzziest update of Springsteen’s “Atlantic City.”
“You’re Different (In Person)” is oddly poignant, maybe since online dating is such a given these days when it comes to how people find other people. It seems weird that Pissed Jeans haven’t already written a song about online dating, actually. But here it is, and it will make you cry snotty tears of cringing laughter and remember to never accept a date from anyone with a poorly-lit profile picture ever again.
As far as the music goes, the production is notably cleaner than their previous albums, which serves them well on songs that employ their gritty blues swagger, such as “Cat House,” which is about as glorious as a double entendre gets. “I got an invitation, the sorta thing I wanna try… give it a shot before I die,” moans Korvette morosely. Alas, his hope of finding a “feline” companion are dashed by itchy eyes, sleeplessness and the feeling of having committed a crime against one’s body. Behold: cat allergies as a metaphor for visiting a hooker.
One of the best things about stepping into Pissed Jeans’ modern-day theater of the absurd is the occasional forays into sympathetic and reasoned views of what other people go through. Disgruntled Letter Writer may not have considered that it’s actually pretty punk rock to advocate for the rights of a large part of the population to not be harassed and belittled, which is the gist of “Male Gaze.” While it took Henry Rollins and Steve Albini years to pick apart their misanthropic worldviews and separate women from their general issues with humanity, here you have a song where Korvette openly admits, “It’s when you’re judged before you even get to speak a word/It’s when you make the smartest point and it goes unheard/I’m not innocent – I’m guilty/I’m not innocent – but I’m sorry.” Someone get this guy to lecture the entire GOP, for a month straight.
Stepping into Pissed Jeans’ sweat lodge of sexual inadequacy, vindictiveness and processed foods can be either the happiest or the most anguished experience you’ll get from a band of their ilk. Pissed Jeans are not the band to go to if you want what Disgruntled Letter Writer seems to want, which is punk rockers as crazed degenerates who scream about veganism and don’t use the internet. Instead, they’re a philosophical foray in the other direction: Just as there’s a terror in realizing you’re just a vile cretin like everyone else, there’s transcendental bliss in their self-hating hymns for the everyman. – Alyssa Greenberg