Pissed Jeans

Spoiler alert: Pissed Jeans just like picking up that dirty ol' snake of conformity by the tail and giving it a shake. Why Love Now is their fifth album, one that seemingly marks an ever-diminishing quantity of f***s being given about what most other bands would perceive as trying to connect to an audience; instead, the abominable quartet prefer to trawl modern life's darker stuff with a salacious grin and double helpings of mocking deprecation.

It's a place in fairness which lead singer Matt Korvette is pretty comfortable with, pegging their philosophy out with unrepentant statements such as "Rock bands can retreat to the safety of what rock bands usually sing about... I'd rather not shy away from talking about the internet, or interactions in 2016". They're satisfyingly true to their word, never more so on the sludgy, post hardcore opener Waiting On My Horrible Warning, during which the singer grinds his way through a mis spent youth now long behind, replaced instead by downhill crawl to the sort of physical breakdown which heralds the rude awakening of old age.

Gloomy, right? Well yeah. For Korvette life's just like a box of chocolates - empty and full of someone else's mess - and on The Bar Is Low he focusses in on the modern celebrity condition of self revelation, a process by which he's acerbically claimed "Every guy seems to be revealing themselves as a sh*thead". Quite. Whilst he rasps in condemnation the band unload a kick-ass metal blues concoction in the mould of old-timers Jesus Lizard to square it off; intense and raw, it proves that the trap of perceiving Why Love Now as just noise would be an easy one to fall into, but a lazy mistake.

Continue reading: Pissed Jeans - Why Love Now Album Review