Pissed Jeans
Shallow

No bullshit, I'm sick. These are the first words that Matt Korvette, filthy and frantic, spits into the microphone. This is how Shallow (2005, Parts Unknown Records), the first album by Pissed Jeans, opens. Hi-hat, nailed bat, nailed bat on the hi-hat, and a madman who spits out his soul as if he were the natural son of the baddest Henry Rollins adopted by the most frantic David Yow. Like an abyss: "I'm Sick." Slowly rise, the soul saves itself, hands gripping stones, panting and that chubby Fry, the man with the guitar, as fat as the sound of his guitar, throws you back down with a song ripped directly from the Stooges - "Boring Girls" - which would give the dear departed Ron Ashenton a six-hour post-adolescent marble erection. A single chord that moves forward like an old Ford Mustang on a country road. Ten seconds to catch your breath - "Ugly Twin (I've Got)" -, the bass like an oasis in the desert. The rhythm expands, the guitar enters... the Melvins playing "Sacrifice" by Flipper for 7 minutes and 23 seconds of torture and sonic desolation. A chilling heat that spits you against the wall. "Ashamed of My Cum" (a title worthy of any Yale student) throws you back to the summer of 1984, with eyes fixed on Scratch Acid ready to ravage your eardrums with great pleasure, while on TV some sport is broadcast directly from Los Angeles.

The fuckin' Stooges, Melvins, Flipper, Scratch Acid, second wave Black Flag, guitar saturated in an old tube amp... all the ingredients to make rock a dirty puddle in which to wallow like an animal... riff on riff.

Do you feel like an animal, an animal in a cage? Take your puddle. Amen.