Mudhoney; Pissed Jeans @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

Mudhoney; Pissed Jeans
@ Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY - May 11, 2013

Not gonna front, as the kids say. I have never listened to much Mudhoney beyond frequent playings of "Touch Me, I'm Sick". If they play a radio station live and it's captured for posterity, I've probably heard it. So I know things, I know things. But I don't know enough to write here before you now in any sort of way that would make for an informed Mudhoney review (and pardon the narcissism of this piece heretofore, though thankfully it's nowhere near as bad as the faux-crusty fellow who stormed the stage three times in a quest to take a photograph of himself with the crowd behind him).

So what's here then is a capture of the feelings. And boy whatta feelin'. Smash bang straight up low brow gunky brown rock n roll courtesy of Mark Arm and his expert brothers in arms (sorry). Proto-grunge...insert rock n roll history here...something something...a great time. And no foolin'! This might technically count as the first time I've seen a grunge era grunge related band but that's irrelevant. Relevance! There's a word! And that's what's cooking in the music here. Maybe it's that Azzerad book weighing on me but when I think of Mudhoney I think of an uninterrupted stream of relevant rock n roll, genres and eras be damned. And the live show etches that in stone.

Pissed Jeans of Allentown, PA have been around for quite awhile now and about 5 or 6 years ago, they were buzzed as something of a vanguard of very noisy hardcore-grounded borderline-metal anew. Metz is now the band of taste in that regard but sure enough they run around with these Pennsylvania cats to show all these things remain together. So while it was a long sow before seeing Mudhoney, it was relatively seconds before finally seeing Pissed Jeans. The "we're mentally unwell and that subsidizes our music" element is mostly OK and it's part of the band's well-placed sense of humor. So it works.