grunge

Pissed Jeans – “Honeys”

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Factory towns are, by and large, not a terribly fun place to live.  I’ve lived in more than a few, and believe me when I tell you that the curious intersections of sociology that occur in them have a tendency to wear you down after a while.  Life there is as monotonous as the machines make it out to be; you get into a rut of the same old places populated by the same old faces.  You go to the same bars, have the same drama, sleep with the same people.  Pissed Jeans knows this life all too well.  They come from Allentown, PA.  You know, “Well we’re living here in Allentown/and they’re closing all the factories down/Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time/Filling out forms, standing in line”.  It’s the existential ennui of such a place that lends the band the primal urge necessary to craft their brand of heads-down, cock-out torpedo rock.  They exist in a similar sonic realm as Polaris winners Fucked Up, but where that band reaches for the esoteric, with concepts and operas, Pissed Jeans instead mostly just wants to follow the Stooges in terms of feedback, fucking, and getting fucked up.  They succeed at this wildly; they can deftly balance rave-up bouncing garage punk (“Vain In Costume”, “Bathroom Laughter”) with Melvins-esque sludge (“Chain Worker”, “Male Gaze”).  “You’re Different (In Person)” shows a deep love for the Jesus Lizard.  It’s an album that seems to exist primarily to placate the fears of the nouveau aged who think the Nineties cornered the market on the Sabbath dream.  It transcends these influences, though, with a deadpan sense of humour that sets it to an equal alongside the classics and a balls-out attack that makes it all seem curiously modern.

Final Mark:  A-


 

Soundgarden – “No Attention”

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From their last classic album, 1996’s Down On The Upside, this is a deep cut that leaped out at me tonight.  I always put music on to do the dishes; I can usually make it through an album while I clean the kitchen so it makes a perfect time to pick something and stick with it.  I chose Soundgarden because I’d caught part of Superunknown the other day, and I have been getting the feeling lately that, in the end, the best of the big mainstream grunge bands really was Soundgarden, as long as you ignore Chris Cornell’s lyrics.  I really don’t think I’d ever paid attention to this particular track when I was into this.  I had this album on tape (it was, in fact, the first album I ever went out and consciously purchased) and by the time “No Attention” came along my attention had usually wandered.  Tonight, though, it jumped out and punched me.  It’s one of the punkier tracks the band ever recorded, but then two-thirds of the way through it changes dynamics and completely reinvents itself.   Well worth another spin.