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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you like their name, you'll love their music..., July 26, 2007
If you've been bemoaning the general state of rock music lately, in particular the neutered whining that gets labeled as "punk," then have I got the band for you. The delightfully named Pissed Jeans hail from Allentown, Pennsylvania (that's right, like the Billy Joel song) and the ennui/alienation of working-class life in a depressed economy comes through in their music like pus from an infected wound. Instead of the classic rock stylings of Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp, this band gravitates more toward brutal, soul-dead noise rock, the kind that hasn't been around for a long time. While many of today's underground noise-heads (Wolf Eyes, Sightings, Lightning Bolt) keep at least one cloven foot in the avant-free-improv scene, Pissed Jeans stick to the doctrine of more rock, less art. There was a bygone era, the late 80s to early 90s, when indie labels like Amphetamine Reptile were famed soley for this kind of stuff (if you liked one AmRep release, you'd like them all), and bands like Cows, Hammerhead and Janitor Joe had cult followings among a certain brand of hipster. It was assumed the alt.rock explosion, and implosion, had killed off this sort of thing, but Pissed Jeans, not to mention the English band Part Chimp, are here to prove that theory wrong. Even longtime vets Unsane are back with a new disc (Visqueen), so maybe a noise-rock resurrection is afoot. Pissed Jeans are even signed to Sub Pop--their original roster of bands like Tad and Mudhoney probably influenced them. While their plodding, pounding and feedback bleeding exertions aren't exactly a new thing, in fact it's really kind of retro, this is the kind of mad-at-the-world-but-too-screwed-up-to-do-anything-about-it racket that, oddly enough, acts as a balm when you feel trapped in Bush-occupied-America.
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