Over the course of their 20-year history together, Allentown, PA-based punks Pissed Jeans — Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums) — has never been known to go halfway: They’ve long been known for material that pairs feral vocals and acerbic, biting lyrics with buzzsaw guitars — and for their unhinged live show.
The Allentown-based punks’ highly-anticipated sixth album Half Divorced further cements their longtime reputation for crating feral punk with their acerbic sense of humor. Thematically, the material mercilessly skewers the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood but while still managing to be — perhaps inadvertently — fun. “Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want this reality. There’s a power in being able to say, I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I’m telling you that they don’t matter. I’m already looking elsewhere,” Korvette says.
Slated for a March 1, 2024 release through Sub Pop Records, the band’s members weren’t in a rush to finish the album, which was recorded and co-produced by Don Godwin at Takoma Park, MD-based Tonal Park. “We’re not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years,” Pissed Jeans’ Matt Korvette says. “Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun.” The material’s distilled energy makes the album sound menacing and dangerous — with the song’s unexpectedly veering into classic hardcore punk territory. Korvette says, “We realized we’d never really fucked with pop punk, and we thought, this is something that isn’t going to be immediately recognizable as cool. So let’s challenge ourselves to make it feel cool to us.”
“Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want
The word divorce in the album’s title falls in line with the moments of humiliation, shame and defeat that are held up for all to see on the album. “If you say something enough or if you just allow it to exist publicly, then it loses its evil monster-in-the-closet thing,” Korvette says.
Half Divorced‘s latest single “Moving On” is a hard-charging, balls-to-the-wall, mosh pit friendly ripper with shout along friendly, mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses, buzzsaw-like power chords, propulsive and thunderous drumming paired with Korvette’s snarled delivery. At its core, “Moving On” seems to be as much about trying to put the best foot forward as it is about throwing your hands up and accepting defeat .
Directed by frequent collaborator Joe Stakun, the accompanying video for “Moving On” features intimately shot footage of the band performing the song in an industrial space with some post-modernist art just behind them while other odd things go on: a woman writes down some of the song’s lyrics of a gigantic note pad, another woman comes in to drop off some groceries, trips and falls with some of the groceries falling out. At another point, Korvette walks over in mid-song to get a cut of coffee, which he clumsily spills — before continuing onward. It’s a mix of the mundane and the surreal.
