PISSED JEANS

Honeys (Subpop)

18/20

Pissed Jeans were conceived in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a densely populated post-industrial city that sits on America’s East coast. It’s a city more famous for being the subject of an eighties pop ballad by pensioner’s heart-throb Billy Joel than a hot bed of blistering punk rock. But while Mr. Joel is probably either dead or drinking ginger-slings on a penthouse balcony somewhere, the Jeans are back in full force and it’s the formative years in Allentown which shaped them. Honeys is a savage beast of a record that fully realises the band’s sonic blend of My War-era Black Flag with the lyrical looseness of Flipper and bursts with a warped kind of social commentary that challenges the banality and alienation of modern suburban life. So if you like your eighties radio rock straight and smooth then look away now, because things are about to turn ugly.

Honeys kicks off with the brutal Bathroom Laughter, a track which has been tormenting Crack’s stereo since late last year, and its thumping drums and manically howled vocals still lacerate our ears. Cat House, Health Plan, Romanticize Me and Vain in Costume follow in this classic grunge-punk formula which is tailored to inflict maximum aural damage. As good as these tracks might be, what really differentiates Honeys from most modern punk records is the mediating tracks that  coat this record with a thick layer of toxic grease. Chain Worker is an early  indication to this experimental side to the band, dipping into sludge metal, morphing into the stripped-down Cafeteria Food , and twisting yet again  into the straight-up noise freakout Something about Mrs Johnson. These experimental moments add sonic flavour to the album, but they’re also placed in poignant positions within the track-listing that act as a window between the band and listener, with the uptempo tracks acting as a kind of escape from the daily grind outlined so vividly in Cafeteria Food. Honeys is in no way a 2D record, and it’ll take one hell of a punk band to top it this year.

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Words: Alex Hall