When Pennsylvania scuzz-punks Pissed Jeans released their Sub Pop debut, Hope for Men, two years ago, the album seemed to represent a noble if financially foolhardy way for the label to reinvest their Shins and Postal Service profits. Though Sub Pop, of course, first built its empire two decades ago on caustic, post-hardcore rock, the few signees to mine that tradition since the mid-1990s-- from godheadSilo to Murder City Devils to the Catheters-- tended to have tokenistic standing on an increasingly diversified and commercially viable roster. Pissed Jeans thus appeared to be the latest addition to this lunatic fringe: one that provided a spiritual link to the imprint's storied past, but-- given the limited crossover potential for caterwauling, guttural noise-core-- hardly a foundation for their future.
But two years later, our appetite for absurdist punk-rock seems to be on an uptick. The Jesus Lizard and Butthole Surfers are hitting the reunion-tour circuit, playing venues larger than the ones they filled in their heydays; Fucked Up have scored Fox News-pundit gigs and a nomination for Canada's Polaris Music Prize. Pissed Jeans, meanwhile, have answered this pigfuck-apoolaza with an album that could potentially elevate the band to Sub Pop franchise players. If Hope for Men was distinguished by the canyon-wide chasm between the band's ugly aggression and frontman Matt Korvette's seemingly frivolous lyrical concerns (the potential for a Whole Foods sponsorship remains sadly unrealized), King of Jeans successfully consolidates these two strengths, harnessing the earlier record's sometimes directionless fire-extinguisher splatter into shake-appealing rock action, and cohering Korvette's ramblings into a more complete picture of wage-slave misanthropy and alpha-male inadequacy.
On paper, that latter part might read like the makings of a mid-life crisis record (à la the Wrens' Meadowlands), but the difference is Korvette wears his failure like a badge of honor. And where Hope for Men's carpet-bomb onslaught sometimes obscured the relatable quality of Korvette's observations, on King of Jeans, they're organized into shout-back slogans cathartic enough to keep enraged 9-to-5ers from going postal: on opener "False Jesii Part 2", Korvette answers a litany of social pressures-- from going to the gym to wearing a "tight black shirt"-- with a boisterous holler of "I don't bother!" before celebrating his slothfulness with a playground-taunt chorus of "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah," all to the steady beat of a tambourine, no less.
No one's going to confuse this with pop music, of course, but Pissed Jeans have certainly become more economical and precise in their attack-- gone are Hope for Men's extended exercises in textural noise terror ("People Person") and piano-blues concrète ("Scrapbooking"). In its place are two-minute Germs infections ("Human Upskirt"), Buttholes blurts ("Pleasure Race"), and crazed Nick Cave cattle calls ("Half Idiot"-- a soulmate to "Zoo-Music Girl"). And in "Request for Masseuse", we hear the closest Pissed Jeans will probably ever get to a slow-jam: over guitarist Bradley Fry and bassist Randy Huth's oozing Iommi/Butler riff, Korvette lists off a series of instructions for his personal-ad pleasure-giver; when drummer Sean McGuinness kicks into the lurching groove 90 seconds in, Korvette lets out the creepiest sigh ever, graphically confirming the ending was a happy one.
But if "Request for Masseuse" represents a rare expression of joy for Korvette, King of Jeans' centerpiece track, "Spent", underscores how fleeting such moments really are. At seven minutes, the song is about three times as long as the average track here, but rather than being the most elaborate piece, it's the most despairingly regressive. Where King of Jeans' more compact tracks provide us the opportunity to scream or laugh along with Korvette's complaints, "Spent" is a 16-rpm Melvins-grade sludge feast that slows down the self-loathing commentary to ensure we feel every second of his agony; after counting off the ways his life sucks ("I went and got my car back/ There's a new noise this time"), he finally loses it when he realizes that even a "cold glass of water... [doesn't] satisfy." Recent history tells us that angry, confrontational music tends to flourish during Republican administrations, but King of Jeans illuminates the problems that plague the working man-- receding hairlines, the inability to relate to girls, the transactional nature of romance, the impossibility of proper cuticle maintenance-- regardless of who's running the country or how the economy is doing. The bumper sticker may say "Yes we can," but the guy driving the leased Hyundai on which it's affixed is still left there staring at himself in the rearview mirror, thinking, "No, dude, I really can't."
