Possibly the best band currently signed to Sub Pop, although that might depend on your preference for angular, heavy, noisy, punk rock or Fleet Foxes.
Pissed Jeans seem able to create sonic landscapes, themes and soundtracks to the irritations of life and the minutiae of the daily grind. They create an aural document to a mind on the slide, a bitter and resentful Peter Bagge-like character, an ordinary Joe on the verge of bugging out, big time.
Musically, to my ears, they lie somewhere between The Jesus Lizard and The Birthday Party, but with a relentless pummelling akin to early TAD and Amphetamine Reptile bands like Hammerhead. Live the reality is something more akin to Black Flag meets Mudhoney in a back alley.
They have a new album out, their fourth, entitled Honeys. I’ve not heard it yet, so it’s gonna be tricky to pick out some of the new titles, but hey, if you want that there’s the internet for that stuff.
Tonight’s show features bands due to play at the aborted Jabberwocky Festival curated by ATP this weekend. It looks like poor ticket sales have done for what looked to be a great weekend of noise bands..
Support tonight is from highly acclaimed Leeds band Hookworms who would’ve been playing at Jabberwocky Festival too. The Leeds bands have been around a while now and play a relentless mix of psyche/krautrock, echoing Spacemen 3 and Loop. They play in the round, with little audience interaction and lock into a pummelling psyche rock boogie.
Pissed Jeans drift onstage with a nonchalance that misleads the aural chaos to follow. There’s a healthy deadpan sense of humour from Matt Korvette who states that he’s tried all his life to be pretty, but now he concedes he is ‘too pretty’ – “I guess I tried too hard” he explains as he slouches his jeans around his backside. The band are a force of nature and the singer can barely contain himself leaping, staggering and jumping around the miniscule stage.
It is so loud tonight I fear my unborn children may be deaf as a result of this aural assault. There is a fair degree of unco-ordinated stage diving too, something I’ve not seen in a while, although the pit down at the front doesn’t seem packed enough for any real kamikaze types.
The set ends with False Jesii, the awesome opening track off King Of Jeans and singer Matt appears to be channelling Ian Curtis with some frantic arm flailing. Meanwhile the drummer has a bra thrown at him during the chaos. There’s no encore as such, the singer and bass player just don’t leave the stage and start improvising more noise, which at one point starts to sound like Someone’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight but really I have no idea.