Pissed Jeans' Matt Korvette on Hardcore, Keeping It Real, and Questioning the Awful

This is a free post from Larry Fitzmaurice's Last Donut of the Night newsletter. Paid subscribers get a paid-only Baker's Dozen every week featuring music I've been listening to and some critical observations around it.

Fun fact: I saw Pissed Jeans live back in 2012 and jumped in the mosh pit—a guy stage dove right on my head and my neck hurt for several days afterwards. Gotta stay safe out there, kids! I've loved this band since 2007's Hope For Men and think their latest, Half-Divorced, is a cracking good time; I've wanted to have Matt on the newsletter for a minute, and we were both able to hop on a call in late July where we got into all of it. Check it out:

This was the longest period of time between Pissed Jeans records. Tell me about what was going on in that period of tome.
It's longer when I look at it on paper, but it felt like not that long. I'm sure COVID years make a big difference there. There was probably a good year and a half that we just didn't get together in person—that slowed it down, but that only accounts for a little bit.

It gets tougher for us to put out music that we feel is on the level of quality that we want to give to the world. It's just harder to write original Pissed Jeans songs that aren't some dramatic new direction. But it's a fun challenge. It was definitely the hardest we've ever worked on an album. We had one of those epiphanies where it was like, "Wow, hard work feels good sometimes." If you put in effort, it can be a nice feeling. You can be pleased with the results. That's what we took away—we had a few times in the studio just being pleased to be there with each other, operating at our highest level. It was a really nice time.

What was lockdown like for you?
Nothing fun—just sitting around. We didn't do anything as a band because we're pretty democratic songwriting-wise—there's not one guy who just issues instructions to everyone else, and then we can follow along. I mean, I kind of envy bands that work that way, because we would've gotten a lot done probably. But, really, one person has an idea, or a kernel of an idea, and then we all sit in a room together and see if it's going to be something.

As a band, we're a little social media-adverse on some level. We weren't going to be performing live in the COVID bunker for people to watch on camera. We just kind of faded away in the public eye a little bit during that time—but we've been a band for so long, and we generally do not much compared to what other bands do, so I feel like Pissed Jeans' existence felt the same during COVID's first couple years.

The livestream thing was interesting. As with so many things during that period of time, at first people were like, "Oh, this is okay, this is the new future of things." Don't get me wrong, there was some cool and interesting stuff done within the livestream situation, but a lot of musicians I were talking to pretty quickly were like, "This sucks, I hate this."
"This sucks, I hate this" is kind of the moral of being in a band in 2024. I've definitely felt that change, where I really want to avoid doing stuff that's pathetic—and I feel like the push is for every band to just get a little more pathetic, because it translates to some sort of benefit in the end. I'd rather just be forgotten than doing the ice bucket challenge so that a hundred people can give it a thumbs up. "Oh yeah, Pissed Jeans guy, he did the ice bucket, nice." Then they immediately look away and see the next thing.

I used to see a lot more of you specifically on social media, but you haven't been on there as recently. Pissed Jeans have never really been a very "online" band in general.
[Guitarist Brad Fry] runs the Instagram account—that's probably our biggest public- facing thing. He's in charge of the Twitter, but I probably lost the password. Everyone else just uses social media with their immediate friends. [Drummer Sean McGuinness] has the most friends of anyone in the band, so that's represented, I guess.

I still feel icky about self-promotion, to my detriment. I feel like no one cares at this point. I have friends who promote themselves incessantly, and I don't hold it against them like one bit, because if you want people to know that you're playing a show, you kind of have to post about it six times to make sure that everyone in the area knows it's happening. I just still can't bring myself to do that. It's something we wrestle with. I'd rather just use social media to try to be funny, rather than being a sincere, humbled artist who thanks his fans and wants to treat them like fans. It's a strange relationship that I can't really delve into comfortably.

Well, maybe drawing that line has been a benefit for you guys. I wrote a thing a while back about artists needing to have a regular social media presence, but it does feel like maybe we're starting to swing back around to that being deeply uncool again.
Part of what's fun about being in a band and making music, for me, is feeling like you know you're expressing yourself and digging deep into what you want to share. To me, that feels very cool—and it feels tainted if I'm suddenly having to speak into my phone and make a little video where I'm asking you to do something for me. I'd rather just be less successful, you know?

I also realize that I'm getting older, and there's all these people who are younger than me and might not have had the same like mid-late '90s advantages that I came up with, where you could survive a little easier, generally speaking. You didn't have to think about, "How am I getting paid for this thing that I want to do?"

I do think younger generations are maybe more used to the corporatism of certain things as well.
I guess everything's more precarious now. I'm not gonna say to someone, "How dare you take Taco Bell's money?" But Taco Bell's not asking to give me money, so it's easy for me to say. When I discovered punk and independent art, it was its own reward. You just do it, and that's the most fun thing—being able to play a show, put out a record, any of that stuff. That's the pinnacle: To go home from the post office and have a box of 7" with your name on it somewhere. Once you've hit that, what else do you need?

I feel like that's a very different way of viewing things at this point. Also, any music is immediately available, so it's no longer a secret network to even discover things to hear. It's all out there now. So I can understand there having to be something else to it besides posting your demo to Bandcamp, where you might as well bury your demo in the backyard unless you have a serious social network to support you.

Tell me about the title of the latest album. It's pretty evocative in line with what you guys do.
That's what we try to do, right? Have a short little thing, and then that can be the album and how you approach it. I generally try to have more than just one interpretation for an album title. For this one, it's the feeling of wanting to not be involved in the things that we all have to be involved in—social media, or the things we're told to care about, like having to find out what stupid thing Trump did today. It's not actually helping anyone, you know? I don't want to be in the same stream that everyone else is, gathering information. It's also kind of funny, because we're half-divorced as a band as far as the marital status is concerned.

Yeah, I was gonna ask if it was a commentary on the band's status in general.
It's not something that we're gonna give you all the dirt on, or even think that anyone would really care about, but a lot of Pissed Jeans is about acknowledging who we are and letting that be okay. I don't have to pretend that I'm somehow being persecuted—let's respect the people who are actually dealing with that stuff. Also, I'm coming to you as a white guy who grew up in the '90s and did not live on the streets ever. Let me just be honest with you about that, and if you want to have that color your opinion of me, that's fine, that's good. I can take it.

There's also a thing where people are like, "Oh man, you should check out this band—it's total divorced dad rock." We've all said that, and it's kind of funny, but also, what band of guys our age isn't divorced dads at this point? I feel like divorced dads would hear that and quietly giggle along while feeling ashamed that they, too, are a divorced dad—and it's okay to be that, you know? I feel like there's a lot of tension in guys who have nothing to feel persecuted about and. I want to just have that be an okay thing to be, too. Be who you are, and if you're a straight white guy, realize that your voice isn't more important, but also acknowledge that you are a straight white guy. Don't try to pretend otherwise.

I've always been fascinated by your lyrical headspace—the way you treat masculinity like a mundane, sick joke that men have to continue to live through. It's always been really refreshing to me, and it's funny how I still don't really see many bands doing it how you guys do it. Tell me about refining that approach over the years.
When the band started, I wanted it to be personal, but delivered in a way that feels comfortable for me, which is generally some sort of humor or sarcasm—a dryness—while also trying to delve into things that are kind of not spoken about. To me, that felt exciting. I could sing about nuclear warheads and demon slayers or whatever, but everyone else already does that, and it's all we hear, and I feel nothing. I'm singing in this band, here's my chance to try to make you feel something. I can't shock you to death, I can't say rude things and blow your mind, so what can I do? It's about talking about the uncomfortable stuff that we all shuffle under the table.

Obviously, it's always a tricky balance when it comes to making music that's "funny," but you guys have frequently been able to pull that off as well. Is there anyone you guys have taken cues from in that regard?
The reason that it comes through our music is that it's really just who we are as people. I've definitely admired artists through the years who are so consistently serious that I'm like, "I don't know how you can be like that"—so deadpan, serious, and unsmiling. We're just always joking around in the way close friends develop their own way of speaking. As a band, we've also been friends for decades, and it's just how we communicate, so it feels like the most natural way. It would be really jarring if we were to be friends that were just purely serious, or were delivering ice-cold anger or something. I mean, we have those feelings, but it's not who we are as people. So it just feels like the truest way to deliver ideas.

I can't think of anyone else whose humor I appreciate as a band. Sometimes, if you hear you're a funny band immediately, that feels like a real negative thing—like a gimmick, or they're not serious about their art. And you know what? If people think that about us, that's fine. What can I do? It's just interesting to get peoples' takes, really. If someone doesn't get it and I get to find out, that's way more interesting to me than just having no response whatsoever. I feel like that's what all musicians want at this point—a response to what they've made. Because there's so much stuff coming out now, people will say they like your album for roughly three days and then it's gone to the wind.

We just feel like the most natural way to convey ideas is by being a little silly—but, also, hopefully, totally sincere too. That's where the sweet spot is: When I'm expressing myself fully truthfully, but also having fun with it.

How did you feel about the response to the new record?
Great, I guess. I don't know. What artist doesn't hope for more? A little more. Even just more as in, more people talking about it. I wish we would've gotten more people talking about it that I saw somewhere. But, at the same time, it's our sixth album, and what band's sixth album gets talked? Nine Inch Nails' sixth album, probably not the one that everyone talked about. It's just not a period that people care about. Are the Breeders at six albums? Probably the sixth, no one cared about compared to all the rest, and that's just how it.

That's part of the Pissed Jeans process—acceptance of getting older, acceptance of our place. We're never gonna be the hot new band. We might've had an inkling of that 15 years ago, but it's just such a joy to be a band anyway. We still all work jobs, and it's just too much fun being in a band. That's what we're thrilled about: Just getting to still do it on any level, putting out records, playing shows. I feel like we're kicking ass. It's the best feeling in the world when we giveyou a band that sounded like Pissed Jeans, because it would really crush my soul if I felt like we phoned in something. Hopefully we just never reach that point.

You guys have been around for a while now, and you've been on Sub Pop for most of your career. Reflect on your own experience in the music industry through that lens.
I remember when we put first our first record on Sub Pop, we got promo CDs for it, and I remember thinking, "Damn, it sucks that we exist now, because everyone can download your stuff." And it progressively gets worse each time when it comes to people engaging with your music, knowing it exists, and buying your records. If we started today, no one would know. We would go nowhere. I feel very lucky that we started when we did, because it was a whole lot easier to reach people. There were actually magazines and fanzines—central hubs for hardcore and punk, where you could at least say, "Alright, I'm gonna pick up Maximum Rocknroll or Punk Planet or Heart Attack and get a pulse for what's going on." Now, everything's on Bandcamp and it all looks the same. The "Play" button is in the exact same place for everyone. I feel lucky to have existed before it is now, because it seems a lot less fun to engage with the rest of the world as a musician now.

What about the financial aspect of being in a band?
We made the choice from day one to never "Go for it." No quitting our day jobs, no hitting the road. I feel like that's a big reason for our longevity—it just stays fun. When we are on the road, which is not often, it's been really exhausting physically but so much fun just to see people, rather than pulling up to St. Louis for the third or fourth time this year and going through the motions. That, to me, sounds like a horror—and not only going through the motions, but having to call the manager and be like, "What are the the show metrics like? Oh, we're up 8% in ticket sales. Did you do a posted targeted ad?" All that stuff makes me dry heave. There's a definite ceiling on our success—but, again, the first time we put out a record, that really was the goal line. Everything else has just been victory laps.

Sometimes I'm like, "How come everyone doesn't do it this way?" I realized that it's harder to just have jobs that you can live off and do music. You'd have to slowly build a local friendship situation and then hopefully someone will check out your Bandcamp. The luck has to hit right. It's all just precarious. Even Bandcamp, which I'm bemoaning—we're all on it and it all looks the exact same. It's so hard to differentiate or stand out, and it's probably going to get way worse when Bandcamp inevitably goes down. It's not going to be here for 50 years. Whatever happens after Bandcamp gets sold for the third time to Peter Thiel or whatever is probably going to be worse than this. I'm going to be talking to you 10 years from now, wistfully remembering Bandcamp.

The notion of people not conceiving of doing what they love in a non-careerist fashion definitely applies to what I've been doing with this newsletter. I started this to get away from what I see as like the corporate music writing sphere, which is really limiting and run by some of the absolute worst people on the face of the planet. I've been able to do this with some degree of success because I've built an audience since I've been around for a while, but when younger people ask me about how to do this, I'm like, "You have to have another job. You can't just go it alone at this point." It's the most stable way to approach things.
I like to think that the fans can tell, too, if you're doing a newsletter because you love it, or if because you feel like it's the savvy move. A lot of younger bands that are even maybe in the same general universe as us are like, "Okay, maybe we should pose in this manner online, do these clips, do a video, work with this person." People are always, on some level, followers—or scared of doing the wrong thing. I got into this because I admired like all the freaks who would make the strangest decisions, and that's what excites me now still—seeing people who are making the moves they're making solely because it makes sense to them, not because they're trying to calculate how their band name font can be up two sizes on the next fest that they're hoping to wiggle onto. To me, they're really missing the fun that can be had.

Obviously, there's been a bit of an uptick when it comes to interest in hardcore and heavy music in general. Tell me about your perspective regarding that.
I feel like we don't make it easy for regular hardcore types to like us—people who just want a graffiti-tag logo and some sort of vague message of positivity mixed with breakdown parts that come when you'd hope they do. Some people are probably checking us out, but generally I revel in not making perfect sense to the majority of people. If the record just does what you expect—you can air-drum the fill that you've never heard before, just because it feels so familiar—that's when I feel like we'd be making a mistake with what we're trying to do.

Growing up with hardcore, you had to be a participant and wonder about it a little bit. Now, everyone knows that if they're going to stage dive, it's probably being recorded somewhere. All the crowds feel super self-aware—whereas, before, no one cares about this besides the people here, so we can loosen up and be ourselves and try to do something new. And if it tanks amongst the 50 people here, so be it. It just feels like there's a standardization to hardcore now, as far as the stuff that's more popular than like ever before. It's also not my number one style musically. I love a lot of bands, but any time a scene gets big, there's just so much filler. And there's no shortage of the hardcore sound if you want it, but I don't wake up and say, "Man, I just need some hardcore punk." I have been satiated.

"Everywhere Is Bad" really stuck out to me on this new record. It reminds me of all the stupid arguments about coastal cities you see online, for one. Tell me about writing that one.
That's a song I was psyched on. That one was the most "my idea" of any song on the record as far as, "We should have a song that's a little out of our wheelhouse sonically." It's probably closest to pop-punk, a fun and unexpected thing. If we were to blast you with squealing, industrial grinding sounds, you might probably expect that more, but that's not a shocking thing in 2024. So it just seemed like a really fun song to have.

Lyrically, it was just from coming from a sense of, like, man, nowhere is good, you know? Ecological issues, political issues. You can't just flee America, and you can't stay in America. You can't stay in a city, and you can't move back in with your parents. Everything is going to be obnoxious and bothersome. It also feels oddly calming to me, knowing that wherever you are does suck. I'm sure places are better or worse than other places, but a lot of places just suck. You can list a million reasons for any place, and they're kind of legitimate.

I always kind of laugh whenever people are in a new city and have this tourist-eyed feeling of, "Wow, this feels so much different to what I'm used to—maybe I should move here." Whenever I hear anybody say that, or when I feel that, I'm like, "You know, if you lived here, you'd probably want to be somewhere else."
Do you follow the Instagram account @northwest_mcm_wholesale?

No, but I will after this. Describe it to me.
I'm sure readers of the newsletter are familiar. It's this guy who makes hyper-aware memes about this very topic—shithead boyfriends who move from Baltimore to Portland and adopt a specific type of behavior that gets them laid. I became aware of him after that song, and I was like, "Right, other people are feeling this too—how obnoxious life is in general right now." How we're all looking at each other from side to side being like, "Who chose this for us?" We're all wondering that as we you know buy a $12 latte. I feel like, with my generation, there's hopefully more of an awareness building of how stupid so much of what we do is.

I do feel like there's a broad swath of millennials who are way too solipsistic to ever really get it, which is a little frustrating. I've had to tune out any generational frustrations i have and just focus on trying to exist as a decent person.
It can be a scary path to self-assess, because the moment you realize something is kind of nonsensical or bad, or not the way things should be, you just unravel it like an onion until your whole world is shot and you realize, "What am I doing with any of these things that I engage in on a daily basis?" A lot of people just tune it out and book their $6,000 Disney weekend because that's the only way they know how to preserve their sanity. But the acceptance feels good.

Yeah, during the pandemic I squared away with a lot of things of that nature and was like, "Okay, I think I can carry on in a relatively well-adjusted manner now." But it's hard, especially you talk about these things with other people. They look really stricken when they have to consider how much everything actually sucks. You don't want to hurt anybody, either.
Yeah, how much it sucks and how much you might be perpetuating it. It's a tough thing to look at, for sure. Questioning things is not always fun work. If you're actually questioning things, man, you're probably the culprit half the time. You have to unlearn poor behaviors—and, to me, that's an exciting thing to try to do, to try to just improve yourself to be a kinder person, like you said. To have empathy and give people the benefit of the doubt, rather than just getting all the toys and the coolest stuff, taking photos of yourself at your best, trying to show off.