Pissed Jeans - Why Love Now album review

The downside of 21st-century living is put through the grinder

Cover art for Pissed JEan's why love now

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If we take levels of anger to run from the mildly peeved through to the righteous blowing of a gasket, then Pennsylvania punks Pissed Jeans go way beyond the latter end of the spectrum and create their own special category. This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.

Picking up where 2013 predecessor Honey, left off, Pissed Jeans rail furiously against digital alienation (Ignorecam), empty relationships (Love Without Emotion) and office sexism (I’m A Man). And that’s just for starters.

Coupled with a thoroughly nasty and heavy musical backdrop of gnarly guitars, rumbling bass and skull-crushing drums (brought to life vividly thanks to the production skills of Lydia Lunch and Arthur Rizk), the end result is an exhilarating, though frequently disturbing, ride through a musical reading of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream.

Julian Marszalek

Julian Marszalek is the former Reviews Editor of The Blues Magazine. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! Music, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME and Shindig! among many others. As the Deputy Online News Editor at Xfm he revealed exclusively that Nick Cave’s second novel was on the way. During his two-decade career, he’s interviewed the likes of Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne, and has been ranted at by John Lydon. He’s also in the select group of music journalists to have actually got on with Lou Reed. Marszalek taught music journalism at Middlesex University and co-ran the genre-fluid Stow Festival in Walthamstow for six years.