Pissed Jeans have shared a cover of Lou Reed’s ‘Waves Of Fear’, available worldwide on all DSPs from Sub Pop. The song was recorded during the sessions for their acclaimed Half Divorced, a 2025 Libera Award nominee for “Best Punk Album.” It was also available as a limited edition flexi disc, which was released in conjunction with their cover feature for the US punk zine New Noise Magazine last spring.
Matt Korvette says of the song, “The seasick bass riff that centres ‘Waves Of Fear’ is one of my all-time favourites, so we had to take a stab at this paranoid, self-loathing classic. I yell ‘take it Crystal!’ at the end because Crystal Waters frequently records in the same studio we had recorded in, and we were hopeful she might ad-lib some soulful vocals at the end, the next time she stopped by. Sadly it did not pan out.”
AA
Pissed Jeans have a series of shows coming for the spring and summer of 2025 in continued support of Half Divorced, including an appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales on 15th August.
Sat. Apr. 12 – Allentown, PA – Archer Music Hall (w Orphan Donor) Sat. May 24 – Milwaukee, WI – Cactus (w Necron 9, Sex Scenes) Sun. May 25 – Minneapolis, MN – Caterwaul Festival
Thursday night in Leeds, and while the extent to which grassroots venues are struggling is a hot topic right now, you’d never think it on arrival at The Brudenell, who are packing two sold-out shows simultaneously tonight, and it’s getting busy the moment they open the doors.
They must have done a massive batch of wristbands for Yard Act’s recent residency, as they’re still using them tonight. I was glad to whip that one off the moment I’d left – I’d hate for anyone to think I’d actually gone to see them. But it’s good to know they’re not going to waste, and they’re using surplus wristbands rather than increasing beer prices (the fact there’s a major-league venue where you can still get a pint – and a decent pint at that – for £3.40 in 2024 is amazing and testament to The Brudenell’s operational model).
It might have been while watching an episode of Law and Order that I quite recently discovered the significance of jade hairpins as a thing, but the band? They’re an unknown quantity. Sometimes surprises are a good thing. Others, no so much. The only positive about turning up for this acts is that… no, there’s not one positive. They are fucking awful. I’ve come to give leeway to acts who aren’t my thing, who are a bit ropey, who may be having an off night, who are new… and as such it’s rare that I actively dislike a band. But Jade Hairpins are so awful it hurts. They sound like they can all play, individually, but together? No. They make a horrible uncoordinated mess of doing big 80s radio rock and everything about it is simply wrong and their set drags for the longest and most painful half hour imaginable.
In contrast, Pissed Jeans power through their set in the blink of an eye. This review has taken considerably longer to write than the set’s duration. The fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to really do justice to a performance of this calibre. Bassist Randy Huth is wearing a Poison Idea T-shirt, in case anyone needed reminding of the band’s hardcore credentials. They shouldn’t: their latest album, Half Divorced, is a really gnarly beast of an album that really does dig deep into their roots, and is a blistering roar of a record, which was always going to translate into some intense live performances.
They’re straight in with a couple of cuts from the new album, Half Divorced, dispatching ‘Sixty-Two thousand Dollard in Debt’ up front with a corpuscle-busting ferocity.
The thing about Pissed Jeans, as I mentioned in my review Half Divorced, is that they’ve evolved as they’ve aged, and if Why Love Now was a nasty and at times awkward and uncomfortable discussion of office politics, shoving the wrongness of toxic masculinity in our faces, Half Divorced is the sound of midlife crisis articulated as rage thrown in every direction, but none more forcefully than inwards.
Matt Korvette’s performances have always been centred around his being a guy who’ s not especially cool playing at being cool because he’s on stage – the slightly off-key office team leader who resents his job and everything corporate and yearns to be a full-time rock star but has bills to pay, so sucks it up while seething, and then pouring all of this festering frustration into the music. For me – and surely many others – much of the appeal of Pissed Jeans has been around their knack for ‘keeping it real’ – uncomfortably so, grappling with the aggravations of mundane white-collar existence. Drummer Sean McGuinnes’ frayed sticks (I spend half the set wondering how long before one of them splinters mid-song: he doesn’t play gently) aren’t an affectation: he’s got bills to pay which take priority over having a sackful of gleaming fresh sticks hanging off his – very modest – kit.
So how do Korvette’s cool slick moves and poses work now he’s no longer cool and dynamic, that rad and right-on, go-getting new team manager, and instead he’s bald (shaven head to hide the onward match of hair loss) and flabby in his vest and bust-out-at-the crotch and back pockets ragged jeans? It could be cringey, like seeing fat Elvis or Guns ‘n’ Roses. But no: perhaps it’s my age, but this performance channels a powerful energy, a recognition that life is racing past and there’s no stopping it, so when the opportunity’s there, you go all out.
The audience spans a massive demographic, and the reaction says no-one here thinks they’re past anything. The exchanges between band and audience are magnificently difficult, even tetchy – the ultimate bantz.
While much of the set – unsurprisingly – showcases Half Divorced, with ‘Moving On’ standing out as a ragged anthem with an upbeat sentiment that sounds more like a delusional self-spoken pep-talk than a real statement of positive intent – ‘Love Without Emotion’ and ‘Ignorecam’ from Why Love Now are raw and ragged. They blast through the songs so as to render them a blur, and the set doesn’t delve too far into their back catalogue for the most part, but ends with a blinding rendition of rabid slacker anthem ‘False Jesii Part 2’.
An encore isn’t always guaranteed with Pissed Jeans, but they’re back on about a minute later to blast out a two-song encore that lasts about three minutes and probably featured ‘Monster’ and ‘Boring Girls’.
It’s all over in an hour and fifteen and the lights are up at 10:15, but no-one’s leaving feeling short-changed: we’ve just witnessed a total sonic tornado, and a band on top form.
When grunge exploded and was endlessly touted as ‘the voice of a generation’, there was considerable truth in this: as a teen in the early and mid-90s, it felt like a moment in time which was fresh and exciting. After years of polished pop and hip-hop becoming the dominant forms, a breakthrough of music so raw and visceral felt like a tidal wave, crashing through the airwaves and obliterating the endless sameness, while articulating the angst and disaffection that filled the stagnant air at the time. Sub Pop unquestionably played a significant part in bringing these vital bands to the world – the label equivalent of a grass-roots venue putting out records by bands they believed in – and that belief proved to be justified. Even the ones who didn’t go full Nirvana or Hole, like Mudhoney and Tad, were culturally significant and remain so.
Every generation seeks music which speaks both to, and for it, in some way or another. Which brings us, smoothly, to Pissed Jeans. A racketous grunge band on Sub Pop who speak to, and for… well, I sort of feel an audience who are growing up – by which I mean older and more disillusioned all the time – with them. If grunge was initially supposed to be the voice of working class, blue-collar, flannel-shirt and knackered up jeans wearing folks and articulating the angst of the stuck in small town in menial dayjobs, then Pissed Jeans brought a post-millennial, global capitalist, tertiary industry aspect to it. Their appeal has always been their ordinariness: ordinary guys with ordinary office dayjobs, writing songs about the shitness of ordinary life in ordinary office dayjobs, office politics, and generally mundane things that really grind your gears. We love them because when they finally get enough time out of the office to make music, it’s real, and it’s relatable, venting all the frustration and anger that an accumulation of small niggles over the course of a crap day at the office can build to a desire to shout and kick stuff.
Pissed Jeans have always been, if not heart-on-sleeve, a band whose separation between life and art had been fine at most. As the awkwardness and ennui of disaffected youth has faded, so it’s given way to reflections on the tribulations of responsibility and the cloud which descends with the realisation that time is passing – and at an ever-accelerating pace – and what have you got to show for it? You’re still grinding away at the dayjob, you’ve maybe made it to be a call centre team leader or something equally mundane and FUCK!
As much as they’re a band who don’t appear to take themselves too serious, it’s also clear that they’re serious about what they do: they need this outlet, this escape. And so while it’s tempting to focus on Matt Korvette as the lyricist and focal point, their work is very much a collective thing. They all went to school together, and have grown together, and you can imagine them all collectively ad individually navigating arranging band practices around work, wives, and so on. Why Love Now was a dark exploration of office politics and crass chauvinism and the fact that men suck, and attempting to navigate these times as average white men – because when you see average white men posting online in response to the latest grim revelation that it’s ‘not all men’ your heart sinks because it’s clear it’s most men at some time and we all need to do better – isn’t easy when you recognise that you are part of the problem and there’s no escaping it. Korvette’s lyrics are burning with bile, and while loathing abounds, the fiercest, most incandescent anguish manifests as immolatory self-loathing.
Half Divorced is an album burning with blind, impotent rage and life and the hand it deals. It sees the band really dive in hard to their hardcore roots and pack in track after track. Whereas Why Love Now may have ventured into more exploratory territory under the guidance of Lydia Lunch as a producer, with some longer songs, Half Divorced packs them in tight, with most songs coming in well under two minutes, in proper old-school hardcore style, and it’s one of their fiercest collections to yet.
The three singles released in advance, with the latest being ‘Cling to a Poisoned Dream’, are full of dark energy. Whereas its predecessor placed the lyrics more to the fore, they’re often buried in the blurry murk of the furious, balls-out hardcore assault, and overall, Half Divorced is about sonic impact and it rages hard through dingy basslines and squalls of feedback. Half Divorced is an angry record, and you get the impression they’re angry about everything, but a large portion of that anger is inwardly-focused. I mean, what’s more perfectly midlife than making an album that recreates the sound of your teens while being pissed off with work, the world, and the shitness of your ageing self? ‘Alive With Hate’, clocking in at just over a minute and a half is everything the title suggests, and pretty much sums up this dirty articulation of raging while ageing. If they’re overcompensating by cranking it all up a few notches, well, they can overcompensate away: as OFF! demonstrate, age is no barrier to being cool as long as you’ve still got the fire. Right now, Pissed Jeans have got all the fire, and Half Divorced is relentless and raging and as good as they’ve ever been.
Pissed Jeans is sharing the Joe Stakun-directed official video for “Cling to a Poisoned Dream,” a bruising meditation of harsh truths, and a highlight from their excellent sixth album Half Divorced, out this Friday, March 1st, worldwide on Sub Pop.
Next week, Pissed Jeans will appear on The Best Show with Tom Scharpling on March 5th and will also host an hourlong takeover of NTS Radio on Friday, March 8th (5pm GMT).
Watch the video here:
The twelve songs on Half Divorced skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood. Pissed Jeans’ – Matt Korvette (vocals), Bradley Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) – notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer.
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by Pissed Jeans and recorded by Don Godwin with assistance from Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (co-producer and mixer for Why Love Now).
Pissed Jeans shares ‘Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt,’ a crushing new track about the heady excitement of shrinking debt-to-credit ratios, and a highlight from their forthcoming album Half Divorced.
Listen here – it’s a belter!
AA
Last month, the band announced the release of the album with the official video for indelible lead single ‘Moving On’ from director and frequent collaborator Joe Stakun (‘The Bar Is Low,’ ‘Bathroom Laughter,’ ‘Romanticize Me’).
Pissed Jeans’ Half Divorced is the follow-up to 2017’s Why Love Now, an album that took aim at the mundane discomforts of modern life. The twelve songs of Half Divorced skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood. Pissed Jeans’ – Matt Korvette (vocals), Bradley Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) – notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer.
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by Pissed Jeans and Don Godwin and engineered by Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (co-producer and mixer for Why Love Now).
Pissed Jeans’ previously announced international tour dates in support of Half Divorced span Friday, February 29th through Thursday, April 4th. Additional live dates will be announced soon.
Thu. Feb. 29 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
Fri. Mar. 01 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s
Sat. Mar. 02 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
Fri. Mar. 15 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
Sat. Mar. 16 – Brooklyn, NY – St. Vitus
Fri. Mar. 29 – Schijndel, NL – Paaspop Festival
Sat. Mar. 30 – London, UK – EartH (aka Hackney Arts Centre)
Sun. Mar. 31 – Manchester, UK – Manchester Punk Fest
What timing! Getting up and starting work on the dayjob in the dark, on a cold, cold morning on what felt like the Mondayest of Mondays ever, my day suddenly took an unexpected upturn on the arrival of the news of an imminent new album from Pissed Jeans – and best of all, a video for the first track to be released from it.
On 1st March 2024, Pissed Jeans will release Half Divorced, their incredible sixth album, on CD/LP/DSPs worldwide from Sub Pop. The band is sharing the official video for indelible lead single “Moving On” from director and frequent collaborator Joe Stakun (“The Bar Is Low,” “Bathroom Laughter,” “Romanticize Me”).
Watch it here:
Pissed Jeans’ Half Divorced is the follow-up to 2017’s Why Love Now, an album that took aim at the mundane discomforts of modern life. The album and its singles received praise from The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Uncut, Stereogum, and more.
The twelve songs of Half Divorced skewer the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood. Pissed Jeans’ – Matt Korvette (vocals), Bradley Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass), and Sean McGuinness (drums) – notorious acerbic sense of humor remains sharper than ever as they dismember some of the joys that contemporary adult life has to offer.
Half Divorced includes the previously mentioned “Moving On,” the omnidirectional piss-take “Everywhere Is Bad” (Spoiler alert: “Seattle is soaking wet”), shrinking debt-to-credit ratios in the bracing “Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt,” and the harsh truth-telling in the bruising “Cling to a Poisoned Dream.”
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by Pissed Jeans and Don Godwin and engineered by Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (co-producer and mixer for Why Love Now).
Pissed Jeans’ previously announced international tour dates in support of Half Divorced span end of February to April. New shows include Friday, 29th March 29th in Schijndel, NL at the Paaspop Festival. Additional live dates will be announced soon.
Thu, Feb 29 Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR Tickets
When the shit builds to a tsunami, your laptop’s fucked and all you want to do is curl into a ball and forget absolutely everything, noise is the answer. It’s not a cry for help or even a public moan as such, but sometimes it all gets a bit much. The little thing accumulate to the point where they’re a big thing. You feel weak for letting it escalate like that, but it’s sudden. One minute, everything is ok, and ticking along nicely, the next, you’re suddenly overwhelmed.
Having recently experienced a mammoth rush of excitement on discovering Mammock, I’m buzzing all over again having been introduced to another bunch of noisy fucks, namely Hammock. These guys really aren’t into slouching about, and their debut is tense, wired, and packs some furious energy.
The press release tells me that ‘They sound pissed, frustrated and rebellious, and play their instruments with a nasty intensity and nihilistic ferocity. Imagine a mix of Unsane, Chat Pile and Pissed Jeans and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how these youngsters sound like.’ Obviously, I’m sold before I hear a note, and have to say it’s a fair summary of their seven-song set (although the first and last, ‘Intro’ and ‘outro’ respectively are what their titles imply, bookending five back-to-back blasts of riotous racket, all of which clock in between two and a quarter and a fraction over three minutes. They really do keep it tight and punchy, and pack a lot of abrasive noise into those short sharp adrenaline shots.
The vocals are distorted, shouted, gritty, and are pithed against guitars that crash in from all angles – hefty slabs and thick chunks of distortion collide against scribbly, scratchy runs of broken math-rock noodles, while the bass snarls around and booms darkly and the drums roll like thunder, as exemplified on lead single ‘J.D.F.’
It’s jarring, fast-paced, and buzzes and roars, and it’s not just noise – there are some smart bits and pieces all bouncing about in the mix, often happening all at once. It is, at times, bewildering, but above all, it’s awe-inspiring.
There’s a moment around forty-five seconds into ‘Contrapoint’ where the bass and guitars both kick into a monster riff and it punches you right between the eyes as a ‘fucking yesssss!!’ moment that absolutely seals the EP as a bona fide belter.
The buggers keep doing this: disappearing, then coming back, with no forewarning, no fanfare, with more killer noise.
And so here we are: ‘Leisure Centre’ crash-landed today to herald the imminent arrival of a new EP, out next month.
It’s as good as anything they’ve ever done. ‘Leisure Centre’ has the same kind of nagging, repetitive riff that features in so much of their work, from the definitive early songs like ‘Trick Fuck’ through to more recent classics like ‘Shirts’. And if anything, ‘Leisure Centre’ sounds like ‘Shirts’ on heavy tranquilisers: slow, stumbling, lunging, all the weight and all the murk. And of course, it’s all about that big, churning riff. It sounds a whole lot like Pissed Jeans. This is very much a good thing.
If the rest of the EP is half as good, it’s going to be a corker.
Formed in 2018 over a mutual appreciation for ugly rock music, MUSCLE VEST, have been making waves across the London alt rock scene with their brand of abrasive sardonic noise rock.
Comprised of veterans of London’s music scene (Massacres, Lull, Thunder On The Left, Bourgeois & Maurice etc.) and taking influence from bands such as Pissed Jeans, Melvins, McLusky, The Jesus Lizard and Whores, MUSCLE VEST aim to reflect the struggle of the average person against an exploitative system within a crumbling state.
After 2020’s debut EP Human Resources – described as “leading the charge for noise rock in the UK” (gbhbl.com) – MUSCLE VEST return in 2021 with follow-up EP Live Laugh Loathe, encapsulating feelings of worthlessness, anxiety and desperation endemic to modern working culture.
Like its predecessor, Live Laugh Loathe was recorded, mixed and mastered by Wayne Adams (Petbrick, Big Lad, Death Pedals) at Bear Bites Horse Studio in London.
Recorded in the final week of October 2020 under the spectre of increasingly harsh lockdown restrictions, sophomore EP Live Laugh Loathe sees Muscle Vest following in its predecessor’s footsteps, exploring oppressive elements of modern society from morals-free corporatism to toxic masculinity, cults of personality and a dash of Lovecraftian horror.
‘Creepy Crawlie’ provides a taste of the EP, and you can stream the video here:
Aural Aggravation 