A bank teller friend recently told me a true story that made me think of the noise band Pissed Jeans. It seems an old homeless man in a coonskin cap made a daily habit of lingering in the bank’s lobby to warm up. Nobody bothered him until the day a bank guard went over to make sure the old man was still alive, only to discover that what the homeless man was wearing on his head wasn’t a coonskin cap, but a dead squirrel.
I don’t know why the story makes me think of Philadelphia’s finest noise rockers, except that I think they’d find it hilarious. They don’t wear coonskin caps and they look like normal Joes, and in my opinion are the best noise band to come our way since Cows. They have an uncanny ability to find sick humor in the mundane, and rely on sarcasm, hopelessness, and twisted humor to get their point across, their point being that the everyday world is an awful, awful place. Their music alternates between plodding and pummeling and violent and fast, and Matt Korvette’s rabid spews on the quotidian bring to mind Michael Gerald and Killdozer at their best.
Pissed Jeans won my heart forever when I saw them live. On their “hit” “Boring Girls” they invited audience members to come up on stage to play the song while they hung about watching, something I’ve never seem any band do anywhere ever. It was great, especially since the band’s doppelgangers played a more than credible version of the song. I also love Pissed Jeans because they have a sense of humor, as titles like “I Broke My Own Heart” and “Ashamed of My Cum” indicate. And let’s not forget the immortal “Cafeteria Food,” which includes lyrics like, “Hey there, project manager/I saw you eating cafeteria food/So you want to call that a healthy choice/I’d argue that isn’t true.” Pissed Jeans truck in the hilarity of banality, and if the world is as absurd as I believe it to be, they’ll never run out of material.
Pissed Jeans (at that time they consisted of Korvette on vocals, Bradley Fry on guitar, Dave Rosenstraus on bass, and Tim Wynarczuk on drums) evolved from the band the Gatecrashers, and they had a very specific musical goal in mind when they changed identities. To quote Korvette, “The idea was to start a different kinda Punk band focused on dead-ended carnal cravings, sexual depression…that sort of thing. Mainly we just wanted to bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous droning rock music that just sucks the energy out of you, the musical equivalent to watching a toilet flush.”
I’ve never bought into Korvette’s description of Pissed Jeans’ music being the musical equivalent of watching a flushing toilet. Or perhaps I just happen to like the sight of flushing toilets. But I’ve always had a soft spot for room clearers, and on a good night Pissed Jeans can clear a venue in no time. I also disagree with Korvette about the band’s sound being monotonous, if by that he means the songs all sound the same. Indeed, they do a wonderful job of mixing things up, although I will concede that Korvette is dead on when he describes the band’s sound as “bludgeoning.” These guys sound like Raskilnikov taking the axe to those two old ladies in Crime and Punishment, that is if Dostoevsky had written comedy.
As for Shallow and Throbbing Organ, it’s a Sub Pop vinyl reissue that conjoins Pissed Jeans’ 2005 debut LP and their first single, both of which were originally released by the Parts Unknown label. Opener “I’m Sick” is better than Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick,” both in the musical department (the song opens with some droning feedback and humongous power chords; then Korvette enters moaning and shouting while Fry does lots of shredding, that is when he isn’t playing ear-traumatizing feedback) as well as in its lyrics. Korvette’s stroke of genius was to alchemize a tired rock trope (“I’m sick and crazy!”) into musical gold by turning the song into a long screaming whine about how he’s got the flu (“I’m sick/I’m dehydrated/I have diarrhea!”). It’s a powerful and hilarious demonstration of the band’s ability to evoke the hilarity of banality, and a great example of the way the band twists old metaphors into new shapes. As for “Boring Girls,” it is droning but in a great way, what with Fry playing the same killer riff over and over again like a machine in a slaughterhouse while Korvette drones on about how he wants to kiss those boring girls, taste those boring girls, etc. It’s a migraine-inducing masterpiece and rock at its simplest and best, and one of my top contenders for best song of annus horribilis 2014, even if it was recorded nine years previously.
“Ugly Twin (I’ve Got)” opens with a bass slowly and quietly throbbing away, before turning itself inside out to reveal one great slice of midtempo, pile-driving cataclysmic drone’n’roll. Fry’s big guitar riff is menacing, as are the nasty slices of noise he carves out here and there, and the rhythm section keeps this one from disintegrating into chaos. Korvette can’t stand his twin, seems to be the message, but he spends almost as much time screaming (he’s a world-class screamer) as singing. The song slows for a bit as Fry plays some ugly shit on the guitar, then the ear drubbing recommences and Korvette—who has the gift of sounding perpetually apoplectic—sings, “I know it’s not fair/But I don’t care” over and over before the song closes with a pretty bit by Dan McKinney (whoever he is) on grand piano.
As for “Ashamed of My Cum,” it opens with a cool bass and snazzy guitar riff and sorta reminds me of a Cows song. (Pissed Jeans owes Cows a large debt, whether they know it or not; their song “Vain in Costume” off 2013’s Honeys might as well be a Cows tune. All that’s lacking is Shannon Selberg’s bugle.) The chorus is great, almost melodic for Christ’s sake, as Korvette sings, “You know I beat it beat it beat it and beat it ’til you know that I’m done/I’m always so full of cum and it makes my brain get really dull/You know when I think about you, it’s just not right.” He’s right that it’s just not right, and I’m not sure I know of any other orgasm regret tunes, but if they’re out there I’d like to hear them to be dead certain that none of them holds a candle to “Ashamed of My Cum.”
“Closet Marine” is a feral, feedback-drenched tune fronted by a howling Korvette, who’s filled with shame over the fact that he wants to be a Marine but is scared: “I sign on late at night/It’s the only way I can feel right/I pledge to Uncle Sam/Ashamed of who I am.” Meanwhile Fry plays and plays, delivering squealing peals of feedback while McGuinness goes heavy on the cymbals. “I Broke My Own Heart” is a spastic and palpitating demonstration of Fry’s guitar prowess, over which Korvette hilariously recounts the many failures of dating himself. “I made myself cry,” he says sadly, and then, “I stood myself up/I forgot I had plans for myself.” Meanwhile the tune teeters on the edge of mayhem, thanks in large part to Fry’s spasmodic guitar wank, which dominates the latter half of the song and reminds me a bit of Greg Ginn at his best.
“Little Sorrell” opens with a snarling guitar and some frantic emoting by Korvette, who screams and wails while Fry plays more guitar that sizzles and sparks like a downed electrical line. There’s some stop and start in the song’s midsection, but the song never loses its unrelenting forward propulsion or its focus. Shallow closer “Wachovia” opens with a throbbing bass and some otherworldly feedback by Fry and is for the most part an exercise in barely controlled cacophony. Fry’s guitar sounds like an electric whip sizzling through the air, while the rhythm section pounds away like a prison work gang breaking rocks in a 1930s movie. As for Korvette he doesn’t make an appearance until the song’s halfway point, when he cries out like a man trying to outshout a heavy piece of earth-moving machinery. This is Pissed Jeans at their heavy best, and the delicate of heart are hereby recommended to give it, and Pissed Jeans, a pass.
The single’s A-side “Throbbing Organ” is a fast-paced romp with lots of groaning and screaming by Korvette, to say nothing of some mean guitar (including a freakout or two) by Fry. But the sound is shallow; it’s important to bear in mind that this was the band’s first-ever release, and some intangible something is missing. The same goes for B-side “Night Minutes,” which is big on the cymbals and Korvette’s ranting, to say nothing of Fry’s barbaric guitar riffs. Don’t get me wrong; I like ‘em both, and it’s great that SubPop has made them available on vinyl. But I prefer the songs on Shallow, perhaps because the songs on the single don’t tickle my funny bone.
Pissed Jeans may be the best noise rock band in the world. They certainly get my vote. Their outrageous rock din provides the perfect ironic counterpoint to the mundane subjects of their songs, which is something lacking in most noise rock, where the subject matter tends towards shock rather than sophisticated musical shtick. Anybody can rant and rave about how horrible life is; I do it myself, all the time. But Pissed Jeans are apoplectic about the little things, life’s small annoyances, and it’s in the realm of the day to day that they mine their material. It’s a joke, of course, but I love jokes, especially jokes as subtle as those Pissed Jeans have up their sleeves. They remind me once again of Killdozer, and that band’s song “Man Vs. Nature,” a deadpan analysis of the disaster films of the great Irwin Allen. That’s the hilarity of banality taken to the nth degree, and next to Killdozer, only Pissed Jeans are capable of pulling it off.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
