Month: November 2023

MEAN JEANS ANNOUNCE NEW FULL-LENGTH, BLASTED

IN STORES AND ONLINE VIA FAT WRECK CHORDS ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9th, WITH PRE-ORDER AVAILABLE NOW 

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ANYMORE” NOW STREAMING ON ALL PLATFORMS
 
AUSTRALIAN DATES ANNOUNCED WITH THE CHATS
 


                                                                                                                                                 Photo credit: Jacob McCann

(November 29, 2023 – San Francisco) Today, we get to share some truly radical news! There’s a brand new Mean Jeans jam, and it’s oozing with all the pop punk slime you can handle. “I Don’t Give a Shit Anymore,” is streaming wherever you hang out digitally. This track serves as a sneak peek of their upcoming album, BLASTED, which hits the streets on February 9th! Plus, you can pre-order it now, and grab a color variant or this sweet MJ headband. 2024 is shaping up to be an epic year with a new album, an Aussie tour on the books, and more dates in the pipeline. The Mean Jeans party bus is going full throttle! Check out what Billy Jeans had to say below:
 
Getting back on tour post-pandemic and doing 9 weeks with The Chats in the US and Australia reignited our appetite for shredding. We got home, wrote a new album, and recorded it by ourselves in Portland over 5 days. Blasted’s got more fast + wild loser anthems, a couple tearjerkers, more Houndy singing, and I finally figured out how to do a guitar solo. We’re kicking the year off with another Australian tour, this time a punk cavalcade of 6 bands.

From the moment they started 15 years ago, Mean Jeans have been creating their own slime punk fantasy world. Study their six previous album covers and you’ll find junkyards full of bongs and yo-yos, macaroni galaxies, Jägermeister spaceships, alien saxophonists and pink slugs in bondage dripping ooze. On their newest full-length album Blasted, the goofball trio have clearly been through wild years and seen some shit—on the cover, the three members peer out of toxic waste bins, no longer cartoons of themselves but instead incredulous country-fried maniacs who are still following a slime punk dream, and dealing with where it’s led them. 
 
Which isn’t to say the Jeans are jaded. In fact, the band—Billy Jeans, Houndy and Junior Jeans—seem to be having as much fun as ever on this record, ripping through these 15 rapid fire ear worms without coming up for air. They seem equally focused on tight catchy songwriting and packing in Easter eggs and absurd lyrical references, including (but certainly not limited to) Tim Armstrong’s X-Filescameo, Mike Schank’s PCP overdose story in American Movie, multiple songs with lyrics about their space-obsessed kindred pop-punker Tom DeLonge, a chorus borrowed from Seal, and a not-very-legal piano collage of well-known pop-punk melodies. 
 
Anyway, this record is a frantic and frenetic joyride, though probably one made in Rick from Rick And Morty’s Space Cruiser and through time and space, rather than any form of road-based vehicle here on Earth. But that energy was probably enhanced by the fact the band recorded Blasted all by themselves here on this planet. Well, at The Trash Treasury in Portland, OR, at any rate—the city where the band first got together and which is one of the least Earth-like cities on, well, Earth. At their own behest, the trio were left entirely to their own devices, putting themselves through their own physical paces by trying to be in two places—the control room and the recording room—at once. One of Rick’s portal guns might have helped make it easier, but who needs a producer or engineer? It’s just another cook waiting to spoil that delicious, fluorescent green, slime punk broth. 

“Studio time is just more fun when no one’s in charge,” says Billy Jeans. “To some extent, I know what I’m doing, and to some extent the other dudes know what they’re doing, but none of us are pro at all. Like, Junior would have to run over to the control room, hit the record button and then run back, all while holding the bass, and then we’d play. It’s idiotic, but when it’s just the three of us fucking around, the vibe is there.”
 
You can hear that all throughout Blasted. It’s a weird, wonderful and wacky album, but also not without its occasional serious moments. Mean Jeans are—still, after all these years—a band that love to party, and that’s what they continue to do on these songs. Every once in a while, though, you might catch a little regret about doing so, if not a full-on hangover. Opener “I Don’t Give A Shit Anymore” might sound like a statement of nihilistic intent, but it’s more what Billy calls an “underthinkers anthem”, a direct response to him overthinking everything all the time, while “Look What Punk’s Done To You”, “Took Too Much” and “I Don’t Know What I Did Last Summer” all address the comedown of life lived in the fast lane. But then there’s also “Something’s Going On”, which is the best (and possibly only) song that’s ever been written about  the cult 1986 comedy horror b-movie Class Of Nuke ’Em High.

At the same time, the album also serves as a kind of meditation on pop-punk, about what it means to be a punk band as opposed to a band playing music in the style of punk. Can you be both? Does it even matter? Maybe. Maybe not. What matters is that, with Blasted, Mean Jeans have made a record that defines what they are and what they’re not at the same time. Most importantly, it was fun for them to make, and it’s an absolute joy to listen to. For Billy, that’s always the aim.
 
“We’re a band in it for the good times,” he says. I’ve always thought if we’re not having fun, then it isn’t Mean Jeans. Which isn’t a recipe for success in the music biz, but I could bitch about that all day if you want. What’s the difference between being a bitch and being punk?” He doesn’t answer his own question, but it might be found somewhere in these songs.


Mean Jeans Tour Dates – Tickets Available Here.

  • 9 Feb 2024 in Maroochydore, QLD, Australia @ The Solbar
  • 10 Feb 2024 in Brisbane, QLD, Australia @ The Tivoli
  • 13 Feb 2024 in Byron Bay, NSW, Australia @ The Northern
  • 14 Feb 2024 in Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia @ The Hoey Moey
  • 15 Feb 2024 in Newcastle, NSW, Australia @ King Street Band Room
  • 16 Feb 2024 in Gosford, NSW, Australia @ Drifters Wharf
  • 17 Feb 2024 in Sydney, AU @ Metro Theatre
  • 20 Feb 2024 in Castlemaine, VIC, Australia @ Theatre Royal
  • 22 Feb 2024 in Frankston, VIC, Australia @ Pelly Bar – Pier Hotel
  • 23 Feb 2024 in Melbourne, AU @ Northcote Theatre

BLASTED  track-listing

1. I Don’t Give a Shit Anymore
2. Let’s Go
3. Diagnosis
4. Lost My Mind
5. Blasted to the Moon
6. Something’s Going On
7. Reggie
8. Taco Bell Parking Lot
9. Look What Punk’s Done to You
10. Slugs
11. Break up With You
12. Took Too Much
13. I Don’t Know What I Did Last Summer
14. Living Large on a Credit Card
15. Pop Punk Casualty

Cigar Shares New Video for “These Chances,” Off Their Fat Debut, The Visitor

No need to front: You are completely forgiven if you are unaware of these Eugene, Oregon, skate-punk hellions. Starting in 1996, Cigar—vocalist/guitarist Rami Krayem, drummer Jon Sortland and then-bassist Jason Torbert—could’ve been a major contender in 21st century punk. Pennywise’s Fletcher Dragge was taken by the trio’s love of melody and straight-up acceleration, which led to the band aligning themselves with SoCal label Theologian Records for their Dragge-produced debut album, 1999’s Speed Is Relative. For the next six years, Cigar (who were named after the winning racehorse in the 1995 Breeders Cup Classic) lived the punk life by relocating to San Diego, appearing on some skate-punk compilations and videos while waiting for their lane to open. And during that time, the members’ lives began to change, from creating families to exploring other musical interests. 

But here in 2022, with Sortland having acquired a playing resume that includes the Shins, Broken Bells and EV Kain, and Jonathan Hischke assuming the bass slot, Cigar were ready for reignition, writing songs and playing gigs in Europe before the pandemic hit. 

“It wasn’t that I ever got tired of doing Cigar,” Sortland reflects. “I just don’t think that all three of us had a unified vision. We weren’t all going the same direction. When we came back to it more recently, we realized that it was just too much commitment to do this next level. And then Jason realized he just wasn’t capable of committing on the level that Rami and I could. Once he stepped down and we brought in Hischke, a lot fell into place. It turned out that Rami and I were willing to do a lot more than we were doing before. So I feel like we’re more unified now because we all have the same trajectory and vision for it.”

“Life gets in the way of trying to live up to… I guess I’d call them childhood dreams,” Krayem says, “but that’s not to discredit the value of those dreams and goals. Because to me, as a 49-year-old, it’s still the same dream for me. So age doesn’t really have as much to do with it, as much as the commitment to the passion. It’s not about chasing trends, like, ‘Okay, now this type of music is hot, so I’m going to jump over here.’ It’s more like ‘This is who I am as a musician and a songwriter.’ It was a long, long process to build [the album], but it’s more about our commitment to the passion that drove us from the very start.”

Indeed, the 10 tracks on The Visitor easily shatter preconceived notions of young listeners and long-in-the-tooth poonks, alike. The album’s opening salvo, “These Chances,” fires right out of the gate with Krayem’s strident vocal and Sortland’s amphetamine drumming powering the proceedings. Headbangers can find joy in the brisk riffing of “In Armor” and “Move On.” The duo are also quick to acknowledge the contributions of Hishke, who plays in EV Kain with Sortland and had a stint in post-everything math-rock masters Hella. (“He’s a prog nerd who’s really bringing in some gnarly stuff,” Sortland enthuses. “He honors and respects the style that Jason set up for us originally while embellishing and making it more his own.”) The Visitor doesn’t let up on velocity or honesty: No detours in the form of four-minute acoustic love songs, trite hip-hop beats or other sonic concessions. Cigar are skate-punk personified, with a well-tuned engine and the knowledge that in punk, only you determine your glory days. 

But while the men of Cigar do sound like a flashing chrome time machine, the intention is different. While a lot of contemporary punks might sing through their adenoids about how their girlfriends hate them, Cigar bring a worldview that can only be acquired by being on Earth longer than the entire run of the Warped Tour. On The Visitor, the trio ponder the line where angst becomes neurosis, with a pedal-to-the-metal efficiency that appeals across generations of music fans. Cigar’s derailed search for glory is detailed in “We Used To” in a way that’s more factual than regrettable.  When Rami sings, “Please just leave my records by the door,” at the beginning of “Forget About Me,” that’s a universal punk emotion, right there. And the closing track, “Knocked Down,” is the kind of self-help anthem punks need in an era where so many people should get a trophy for merely staying alive. 

“Some of it is intuitive,” Krayem offers. “But then there’s also the element of intentionally pushing myself as a lyric writer and ourselves as songwriters. Jon and I collaborated on some of the lyrics which we had not done on the first album, so we were flexing new muscles. But in terms of the themes, there’s definitely the beginning of a relationship and growth in those relationships—including growing apart. I think that there were certain sentiments that eventually came full circle after the album was completed. It was almost like I was talking to myself about what was going to come, even though I didn’t know what was coming.”

Sure, the combined forces of real life, managed expectations and youthful pessimism may have stopped Cigar from their fair share of media coverage, ancillary stages at Warped, and tats on dedicated fans’ bodies. But the kinetic energy coming off The Visitor goes far to reconcile nostalgia and value systems. The fact that it took 22 years to get to this point? That makes Cigar all the more resonant.  

“We can hang out and talk or whatever, but we have this thing between us,” Sortland says.  “This fast, skate-rock, punk-rock thing we grew up on through skating and skateboard videos. And if we’re not doing that, it’s kind of like Starsky and Hutch not jumping and sliding across cars. It’s like, ‘Why aren’t we doing that?’ That’s what we do best: driving a ‘75 Gran Torino and sliding across the hood. Now that’s what we’re supposed to be doing together.”

Barefoot Engineering – Left to Wander

I liked “Left to Wander“, the first full length by Barefoot Engineering, almost immediately after putting it on. Sometimes you can tell right away whether something is your kind of music. After reading their bio, which describes the band as a trio of childhood friends-turned-40-year-old-dads from a large Midwestern city, who are influenced by Seaweed, Knapsack, and Jawbox, I knew I was in for a real treat. If I had to honestly describe what type of band would most likely appeal to me, it would probably be something very close to that. 

The core of this band has been playing music together in various iterations around Indianapolis for almost 25 years. A couple of those bands include The Brokenhearted, and Project Bottlecap, the latter of which also included the original guitar player for The Ataris. With some breaks in there while people started families, this current lineup put out their first EP under the Barefoot Engineering moniker in 2017, and recorded this full length in 2021, the physical release of which was put out on Radio Cake Records earlier this year. 

Although they definitely have their own thing cooking, there is an instant nostalgic familiarity to this band that’s super appealing to me (also a Midwestern born dad in his 40s who likes Seaweed, Knapsack, and Jawbox). “Left to Wander” sounds like something I’d mail cash in an envelope to Doghouse Records in 1998 for. I don’t really know enough about actual “music” or “words” to properly describe this style of music without resorting to comparing them to other bands with whom they share similarities, so let’s just do that for a minute. We already mentioned Knapsack, Jawbox, and Seaweed, all of which are reasonable comparisons. Sort of a cross between the last Jawbox record and Knapsack, but with the bounce of Seaweed. 90s guitar heavy Midwestern emo like Braid and “Purity and Control” era Giants Chair weigh in as well. 

The vocals are clean, and have a nice range, being able to emote aggression without screaming (an underrated strength, imo). It’s vocally reminiscent of Rob from Bum/The Suitesixteen in tone, but laid over something like Silent Majority. I listen to this music and picture myself at their show, surrounded by bobbing heads in rolled up beanies with poorly dyed black hair curling out of the bottom. It smells like cigarettes and I’m 20 years old, it’s glorious. 

No stinkers on this one, but my favorites so far are “Out of the Darkness”, “Book of Faces”, “Meaning”, and the excellent closer “Dancing in the Stairwell”. I love that there are still old friends out there making music like this. It’s very well done, and highly recommended. 

–Zack Akenson