On a night where some of the loudest bands in the country brought their A game to Le Poisson Rouge, Pissed Jeans brought their tripe A game and made real the emerging buzz about this band from Allentown.
"I want you to punch your best friend in the face" screams lead singer, the lithe and dangerous Matt Korvette, and while, fortunately, my best friend wasn't around, and while, I find some of these hardcore antics somewhat latent homosexual substitute bizarre, Matt followed the comment with half an hour of very righteous rock and roll.
2009's King Of Jeans, which passed me by entirely, is a great noise rocking walk after dark, with hints of prog under the layers. On stage, the layers are removed except for the bass player, and the Matt is a high energy, arrogant, smart leader, dancing nonstop when not thrusting the mic in people's faces and causing an uproar in the 60/40 male female ratio audience.
"False Jesii Part 2", with the anthemic singalong "I don't bother" roared back in a appreciation and a later still new song "I'm quick" is preceded by a shout out to the joints.
Matt looks like the kid who kills Bruce Willis in "The Sixth Sense" and comes across like a dozen kinda rock and roll stars. He has a swagger and an arrogance, and, in a night in which I checked out an additional four excellent front men, including the God like genuis who sings for the Rival Mob, he puts this band somewhere else again.
Mike McGee of A.V. Nation wrote about the band: "a grumbling, grooving mess of a thing, full of fluid and volume, purveying over that wondrous stretch of sound between “irritating noise wank” and “streamlined pop-rock” I like the liquidity, there is something sinuous about the band as they go about the hardcore rituals they are saddled with.Even the name Pissed Jeans suggest things about bodily fluids and discharges. They slip and slide through punk, prog, hardcore. They are lizard kings of jeans
Grade: A