ALBUM REVIEW: Half Divorced – Pissed Jeans
Half Divorced is made with the clarity that only coming out the other side of mid-life crisis, borne of divorce, can conjure. The rest is credited to pummeling hardcore-inspired PISSED JEANS. Six albums, 20 years in, and signed to Sub Pop, they have all the fuel to put into their discontented, clinging between youth and later adulthood, art.
If you’re a longtime fan of PISSED JEANS and see a photo of them now you might wonder as to how you liked these guys in your twenties, or if you’re not, you might say “people liked these guys in their twenties?”. Their image is reflected perfectly by Half Divorced, a bunch of 40-somethings dressed like they used to be ready at any moment to open the pit but their backs are too sore these days. They still manage to rip on this new record though; propelled by a divorce, frontman Matt Korvette is at his most unhinged. Opening with Killing All The Wrong People, the quartet descend into a frenzy of vocals drowning in their own urgency, drums that perpetually keep beating out necessity and guitars aiming to stir any emotion that needs to be unbottled inside of you.
That’s pretty much what Half Divorced is, urgency meeting necessity. Korvette spits at sickeningly overbearing attitudes on Helicopter Parent where the disdain can be heard in the swinging sonics; Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars In Debt explores being weighed down by the banks, one that either chronically depressed students or parents with mortgages they can’t afford can marvel at, feeling ever so slightly less alone. There’s something painfully sombre, and relevant, for listeners of all ages. As the record progresses it becomes all the more apparent that it sits within limbo, in its own little personal hell, caged by capitalism. Tracks like (Stolen) Catalytic Converter and Junktime have a sense of desperation in them, the former grasping at whatever options are left, flogging stolen goods, and the latter burning away time with self-destructive indulgences.
Half Divorced is an album about finding yourself again, in your forties, when you’re supposed to have things all figured out, realising that “having it figured out” is a fairy tale sold to you to make the poison that living is, easier. It’s about breaking down the calloused facade you’ve built up by being so insistently jaded by the fact that you’ve been wronged and that isn’t fair. Korvette tears it down with ferocity and perverseness from the start all the way to the end in Moving On, where the riffs are gleeful and no longer driven by the burnt out personality of the twisted day to day. By laying it all out and turning on the faucet of catharsis, PISSED JEANS make their sixth studio album a bold middle finger to what can feel like an inevitable fate.
Rating: 9/10
Half Divorced is set for release on March 1st via Sub Pop.
Like PISSED JEANS on Facebook.