Pissed Jeans

King of Jeans (Sub Pop)

Formed in the postindustrial wilds of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Pissed Jeans has been making indie rock dangerous—or at least mildly threatening—since 2003. Like proudly unfashionable louts crashing through a velvet rope, these four unassuming joes bring atavistic vim to a scene that has mellowed into collegiate, NPR-sanctioned politeness (witness the Shins, Dirty Projectors or the Fiery Furnaces). By reinterpreting and modernizing the cream of ’80s underground crud (Drunks with Guns, the first Mudhoney single, midperiod Black Flag), the group cobbles together its own exceptional racket that yokes the filthiest fringes of hardcore to a slothful garage-metal pillar fashioned after the Stooges, Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath.

King of Jeans, the band’s third album, avoids the free-noise doodles of 2007’s great if patchy Hope for Men, instead accentuating the catchy, no-filler riffs that marked Pissed Jeans’ earlier material. Fatter production flatters better songs, and new bassist Randy Huth (ex–Pearls and Brass) impregnates the music with an unprecedented stoner wallop. Vocalist Matt Korvette’s deliberately shallow, suburban tragicomedies can grow wearying (jeez, more lyrics about unresponsive girls and office life?), but that’s scarcely worth quibbling over: His prole-punk slobber—which sometimes evokes a hopping-mad Brak from the Space Ghost cartoons—is the perfect complement to Bradley Fry’s bucking, feedback-gushing guitar. So all hail the King of Jeans; may frustrated adolescent males and bitter old record collectors kiss the throne in veneration.—Jordan N. Mamone

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