Cog Against The Machine

Photo by Max Zahradnik

issed Jeans do a lot of things that, on their own, could be deemed a bit much: yelping about silly stuff, a smidge of wankery, oppressive feedback everywhere. Fortunately, when these things are combined with aplomb and companioned with some prime-rib riffs, you get what are affectionately known in certain circles as “great fucking songs.” They’re also exceedingly normal dudes, which helps. We caught up with their singer, Matt Korvette, to talk about stuff normal guys talk about—you know, work, hometowns, girls, and Body Count. Vice: I heard you just played with Body Count? Matt Korvette: It was at this big, terrible club and when we got there an MTV-style emo show had just ended. We walked up to the promoter and he yelled at us, “The emo show is over! If you’re not here for Body Count, get the fuck out now!” I guess we don’t look shitty enough to dig Body Count. They were incredible though. Ice-T called Bush a faggot and made fun of My Chemical Romance. He really went out on a limb with those. Shocked there weren’t any teenage Republicans with makeup on there to call him out on that. Yeah, no kidding. The rest of the bands were all totally awful too, but in a great way. Three of the six bands had sexy dancing girls onstage with them. There were even some Nazi skins. Go figure. You guys get out of Allentown much? When we can, but there are day jobs involved. I don’t want to end up living in an eight-bedroom house with hairy armpits and bike culture, you feel me? Yes, like a warm hug of sensibility. What’s your day job? I’m a claims investigator for an insurance company. Basically if you have a deadbeat dad, I’m probably the guy he’s yelling at over the phone at 9 AM because he was caught mowing the lawn when he said he couldn’t move and needed an early refill of Oxycontin. That sounds brutal. Any war stories? I mainly deal with low-income workers who are fed up with their crappy situations and are looking for an easy out. Namely, free money from an alleged and always unwitnessed back sprain that happened in the back room at work behind a wall of boxes. And do you let the squeaky wheels get greased? Whatever. Whether I punk out a dude or get punked myself, my paycheck is the same. So the reason you don’t tour more often is because you’re a cog in the system. Nice. Eh, tours are just a precursor to the real action at home. Last tour all I wanted to do was get home and see this new lady I met. A couple weeks later, she told me that she wanted to know the exact time I was born in order to “figure me out.” I bounced. Yikes. She was psychic, too. And she thought Pissed Jeans sounded like Rage Against the Machine. I knew it would be weird. RYAN DUFFY
Pissed Jeans’ new album, Hope for Men, comes out this month on Sub Pop.