Mean Jeans

Blasted (2024)

John Gentile

The Mean Jeans would shudder at this suggestion, but there’s a certain maturity and songcraft in their new album, the incongruently named Blasted. Just look at “Let’s Go.” Sure, the revved up Ramones energy that permeates all of their releases is present here, but on top of that surge is a bouncy, tightly written musing on one’s place in the universe. “Well I don’t know most anything / I let it go and keep it clean” the band calls out. Wasn’t it Operation Ivy who said “All I know is that I don’t know nothin’” and wasn’t it the great Socrates himself who said “As a conscious entity, I know that I know nothing.”

Mean Jeans are in good company here and they are in such good company that they know that a great album requires MORE than JUST being in good company. To that end, they take a lil’ Ramone and a lil’ Jesse Michaels and bind that into the classic ‘50s pop songwriting mold, jack it up to a punk hyper-blast, and then, to my great astoundment, SUBTLY tie in some twists and turns that elevate the tunes above their by-the-numbers contemporaries. “Let go” ends with a short and exhilarating synth-snap. “Lost my mind” has an ‘80s thrash solo stapled into it but it doesn’t feel put of place- it’s a nods to ‘80s excess and ridiculousness all while pointing out that the ‘80s had a lot of really cool things about it.

That being said, a certain menace permeates the album. The aforementioned “lost my mind” seems to actually be about deteriorating mental health even though it’s a fun bop. “Blasted to the moon” takes a soft jab at Tom delonge before the band contemplates removing themselves from reality because things are just so frikkin crazy right now. And that’s the trick. The band takes important, perhaps sometime overblown and melodramatic topics, and makes them fun, but no less important or introspective. I do love the line “how I feel inside / I’m filled with slime/ how much longer can I hold it in?”

Along the same line, “Look what punk’s done to you” finds the band skewering punk heroes that mostly do nothing but play huge festivals and scream about fighting the system all while looking old and ridiculous… and then the band turns the same beam on themselves and click the trigger. On one hand, it’s safe path- sure take shots at people but also take shots at yourself- but in another way, it’s an interesting way to point iout that the things we fear the most are the things we see in ourselves…or maybe they are just being silly. “Something’s going on” is pretty much a step by step summary of the iconic Class of nukem high film. Nuclear weed makes people go crazy ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

It's always a tough question as to how seriously Mean Jeans take themselves- they often seem to suggest that they are just doing the band for pure fun and often imply they aren’t “importsant.” Is this a form of modesty or does the band truly think that little of themselves? Blasted, with its Plato-esque concepts wrapped in ‘80s homage hammered into perfect 120 second punk bangers, with a little Thin Lizzy and the Sweet illuminating the whole procession, shows that the band is not only among the most studied of modern punk, they are among the most forward thinking, and most insightful, and most self-aware. Of course, if they did say “we are the best,” that would sort of topple the whole experiment, wouldn’t it? As goofball as Blasted might appear, it’s always just one step ahead of you.