Pissed Jeans - Why Love Now

The Quietus

The world of Philadelphia’s premiere shit-stirrers Pissed Jeans is one of delirious sludge and wild-eyed drudge. They stand out from the rest of the pack for their incisive, insidious digs at male privilege, sexual frustration, self-immolating self-image and false pride, laughing maniacally as the house burns down around them. Their live shows up the ante and then some, presenting sparkplug explosions of propulsive power and leering humour, a flailing, sweating, gnashing and gurning entertainment powerhouse too smart to follow convention yet too dumb to deny it. It is great to see that a band that is so antagonistic, so anachronistic, so unabashedly self-reflexive and destructive are still powering through on their own fuel, and their fifth album, Why Love Now, carries on their twisted legacy.

The two released cuts from the album, ‘The Bar Is Low’ and ‘Ignorecam’, cuts closest to the Pissed Jeans cloth. The former features some thick hair-rock riffs and tribal loose-limb dumb drums as Matt Korvette and his frenzied cronies unleash fury on how all entitled fucks think they are the good guy, and that to be a “noble man” isn’t really all that hard, considering the competition; the latter gets back into Neanderthal japes and aping, Korvette howling and gnashing his teeth in a primitive porn-addicted persona who pays to be disregarded by the opposite sex, tailing away as he misspells ignore over and over. ‘Cold Whip Cream’ is even more straightforward, a thrashed-out hardcore mewl, while ‘Worldwide Marine Asset Financial Analyst’ is a breakneck punk brawl, a ninety-second tenet against the office environment and those who espouse its virtues, forever a bugbear and source of vitriol, furthered by the ode for the used and abused that is ‘Have You Ever Been Furniture’.

And while their modern-day derisions, suburban expulsions and masculinity eviscerations are the same weapons of choice they have had since unleashing Shallow back in 2005, these incisive scalpels are still razor sharp, and there are enough impudent left-turns and tangents to show they can vary their shtick while keeping their vehement vitriol firmly to the fore.

The album kicks off with an uncharacteristic pulverising dirge, ‘Waiting On My Horrible Warning’. Blood-curdling screams and a Carpenter-esque synth-like throbbing sets up Korvette’s own bile-curdled howls and growls, ripped from the core of his soul to espouse that he “was a boy spending nights kicking life’s big behind/the only thing I had too much to spend was time”. Each drawn breath is labored, wracked with smoke and spleen, an inconvenience; yet the lyrics are drawled, vehement, filled with phlegm and chagrin. Of course it’s a pisstake – Korvette is still poking holes in misguided misogynistic masculinity as he groans about how he “used to play punk but now I’m singing the blues.” There is a moment, where everything slows down like the tape is being chewed, before all metallic chaos and the chorus from hell joins him to bemoan his inevitable demise.

‘Love Without Emotion’ is so straight along the PJ modus operandi that it seems out of place, augmented by the crystalline post-punk riff that ripples beneath its foundations – as close to a Top 40 troubler as they are ever likely to get (although the sneer remains obstinately in place). ‘(Won’t Tell You) My Sign’ sees Fry’s guitarwork inexorably spiral into a Uniform-esque industrial grind; Fry again heads in a different direction on ‘It’s Your Knees’, taking a Corgan-circa-Mellon Collie angst approach that devolves into a no Wave caterwaul that producer Lydia Lunch can devilishly abide by. ‘Activia’ grinds down to a desert-smoked metal crawl, exemplifying the way the music has bulked out even more since last record, 2013’s excellent Honeys.

Yet the best track here is a gender-politics satirical screed performed, not by Korvette, but by esteemed author and poet Lindsay Hunter. ‘I’m A Man’ is a hilariously grotesque inversion of overt misogyny, with a female taking control in the cubicle-strewn office wastelands. The constant stationery-and-sex innuendo, the bodily fluids, the animal kingdom inhibitions, is driven by high-hat rushes, tribal rumbles and whip cracks. It’s riotous, ridiculous, barrel-scraping smut, and the best manifestation of the Pissed Jeans manifesto yet.

Why Love Now may be their fourth album on Sub Pop, but there has been no cleaning up or pulling punches. Pissed Jeans are as soiled, sordid and scintillating as ever.

Share this article:

Drowned In Sound 90

Back in 2013 it seemed unfeasible that Pissed Jeans would be able to increase the fury contained in Honeys, but boy, how I was wrong. Why Love Now, the Allentown thrashers' fifth album smashes their back catalogue to pieces, one blood stained swing at a time. First single ‘The Bar is Low’ sounds like it has fallen straight out of one of Charles Bukowski’s whiskey-soaked tales of debauchery. The track oozes self-loathing and projected the view of a world very much on it’s knees. Swamp-drenched guitars push through your frontal lobe while Matt Corvette’s pained screams tell us, once and for all, that Pissed Jeans mean business.

It would be extremely easy for a group this angry to slip into cliché and become nothing more than a group of fully grown adult men shouting at 'the man'. Thankfully this has never happened during the groups decade long existence. A lot of this is down to how they have managed to address their anger. This isn’t some sort of act to appeal to moody teens, it’s real feelings from a bunch of perpetually pissed off young men from middle America. The swift one-two knockout of ‘Ignore Cam’ and ‘Cold Whip Cream’ prove this, addressing real life concerns with rants about the crap-storm that is the twenty-first century.

A hefty kick to the gut follows. ‘Love Without Emotion’ is a chugging behemoth of a song. It almost feels like there’s some sort of poetic meaning behind the filthy guitar motions, but I just can’t place it. The restraint on show during the song is extremely unnerving, making you feel as if there’s a nutter lurking somewhere in the shadows ready to pounce on your unsuspecting head when you least expect it.

From here on in the record changes tone: the punk is still there, don’t get me wrong, but the focus appears to have changed. From here on it the group are, as they have been throughout their career, intrigued with the idea of the sexist pig. The type of man who haunts all aspects of life. A power-obsessed individual who wants it all, and believes the world owes him a favour. Which is kind of fair after all, because things are really tough when you’re a man, aren’t they…

Pissed Jeans absolutely nail this analysis, taking on the role of the sexist, deflated man with uncomfortable intensity, successfully peel back the patriarchy of the western world and reveal it for what it is: A selfish, violent beast. Finale ‘Not Even Married’ takes us further into the psyche of America, it’s stomach churning riffs push us through a Budweiser stained star spangled banner and into the back room of a bleak and dirty bar, the kind even Charlie Day wouldn’t be seen in.

‘Why Love Now’ is the first in a potentially endless stream of politically charged punk rock records this year. However, it’s extremely hard to see any of them trumping this glorious, if uncomfortable, masterpiece.

The Guardian 80

(Sub Pop)

Most neo-grunge sounds pretty derivative. Pennsylvania’s Pissed Jeans, however, aren’t updating the 90s so much as peddling ear-curdling sludge laced with punk misanthropy, the kind of witty filth that can’t help but compare favourably with Sub Pop’s prime. Why Love Now, PJ’s fifth, is a surprisingly tuneful deconstruction of themes as varied as cancer (Waiting on My Horrible Warning), the modern workplace (“singer” Matt Korvette is an insurance adjuster) and male assholery that swings between scary and hilarious. Fans will recognise these hang-upsfrom previous outings, but Pissed Jeans are innovating a little – The Bar Is Low could be Queens of the Stone Age fronted by David Yow. Mid-album, they hand a song (I’m a Man) to author Lindsay Hunter to fill with smutty office superior double entendres (“You take dictation?”).

The Guardian 80

(Sub Pop)

If these berserk times demand similar music, then Pissed Jeans are the go-to combo. Co-produced by Lydia Lunch, the Pennsylvania quartet’s fifth album both captures and rages against the lunacy of modern life, pouring derision on everything from fetish webcams and office sexism to the increasing predominance of what singer Matt Korvette calls “shitheads”. Their vehicle for this is a right old racket, as they rampage from sludgy post-hardcore to a kind of debauched grunge, and high-octane guitar riffs tumble into tribal drums. If Worldwide Marine Asset Financial Analyst sounds like a Fall song put through an industrial mincer, Waiting for My Horrible Warning channels the Birthday Party’s rumbling King Ink into a sprawling but glorious mess of modern panic. “I used to play punk but now I’m just singing the blues,” wails the guttural, grunting, wonderfully aghast Korvette. His band’s eardrum-perforating din isn’t for the faint-hearted, but is a lot of fun and delivers some uncomfortable home truths.

Pitchfork 79

Sometimes the best thing you can do as a male feminist is shut up and listen to women who know what they’re talking about better than you. That advice might hold doubly true for male musicians. For every “Suggestion”—and, really, there’s only been one “Suggestion”—there are countless self-identified good guys looking for an easy pat on the back simply for having their heart in the right place. There’s a reason why feminist punk spun off into a kind of genre unto itself: This is not subject matter that men usually do well.

Between their territorial growls and bludgeoning guitars, Pennsylvania sludge-punks Pissed Jeans have made a brand out of unfiltered male aggression; each of their four albums has played like an American Splendor comic reenacted by grizzly bears. Yet more so than frontmen who profess to be infinitely more political, Matt Korvette understands what he can contribute to the conversation about gender relations. His songs offer insight into the forces that drive men: the privileges, compulsions, indignities, entitlements, and double standards. He’s touched on this territory often—most notably on “Male Gaze,” his rubbernecking apology from 2013’s terrific Honeys—but he’s never run with the muse as righteously as he does on Why Love Now, the band’s deepest dive yet into the inglorious male psyche.

The record could almost pass for a concept album, if not for all of Korvette’s usual digressions. He balances out his social insights with asides about sugary snacks, laugh-tracked sitcoms, astrology, and the like, and those flashes of irreverence are more welcome than ever, since the core of the album couldn’t be more pointed. “The Bar Is Low” challenges the way society coddles men, rewarding them for the most modest demonstrations of decency, as if simply not being a violent monster entitles them to a medal. “Held down a job/Even snagged a raise,” Korvette sings, “Right there you’re due/For effusive praise.” On “It’s Your Knees,” he demonstrates how men neg women, picking at their insecurities to cut down their esteem.

And since it wouldn’t be a Pissed Jeans album without a healthy dose of sex and shame, there’s plenty of that, too. “Cold Whip Cream” introduces a frustrated guy too embarrassed to ask his partner to indulge his kink. On “Ignorecam,” Korvette goes off over a Motörhead-worthy riff about the absurdity of men paying cam girls to essentially ignore them: “So you're sick of interacting with women, you wanna pay for something that's free?/Shut yourself up and load the ignorecam, getting off on letting her be.” The track ends in angry, carnal release, with Korvette so overcome with self-hating ecstasy he loses track of his spelling. “N-O-R-G-I-E me!” he chants orgasmically, “O-G-I-N-R-E me!” It’s grotesque, funny, and unsettling—the Pissed Jeans sweet spot, basically.

As deft as Korvette is at describing what the patriarchy looks like from a man’s eyes, Why Love Now’s sharpest insights come from outside himself—by actually bringing in a woman. Author Lindsay Hunter penned and performs “I’m a Man,” a mid-album monologue about life as the office alpha male. Adopting her best Danny McBride voice, she assails a coworker with come-ons and double entendres: “You take dic-tations?/You get it?/You ever been stapled?/… You cold?/Put on that cardigan you got hanging over your chair/Do it slow.” Behind her committed comic performance, there’s a threat of real violence.

On a less loaded song cycle, Why Love Now’s relative tunefulness would be the narrative. No wave pioneer Lydia Lunch produced the album along with black metal practitioner Arthur Rizk, and while that seems like it should be a recipe for discord, the pairing somehow resulted in the cleanest, most high-fidelity Pissed Jeans record yet. None of the bands’ primary influences ever made an album this approachable—not Melvins, not the Jesus Lizard, certainly not Pigfuck. The glistening post-punk riff on “Love Without Emotion” could have come from any number of friendly, telegenic British buzz bands; it’d be virtually unidentifiable as a Pissed Jeans track if not for Korvette’s phlegmy ogre routine. The band was wise to offer more carrot than stick for this one, though. Their music has never gone down easier, but their commentary has never hit so uncomfortably hard.