THE MEAN JEANS are the kids that live down the street that blare the Ramones and the Angry Samoans late at night while they are playing "Edward 40s Hands." They have three things in their refrigerator: ketchup, beer and slime. The Mean Jeans were born when, at the ripe ages of 23 and 24, JEANS WILDER (skins, vox and smokes) and BILLY JEANS (vox, riffs and spliffs) started playing their parent's DC-area basements in the winter of 2006. They grew another member, HOWIE DOODAT (aka JEAN JEANS on the bass guitar), after moving to Portland, Oregon a year later. The thirteen garage pop tunes of Are You Serious harkens back to the Lookout! Records of the early ‘90s, when pop-punk meant snotty low-brow three-chord goodness and not glossy soundtracks to mall strolls. Like any good Cretin’s soundtrack, the "songs about partying" vs. "songs about girls" ratio leans fully toward PBR fueled pogo punk. Pitchfork already said The Mean Jeans "comes over like the Ramones mixed with a pinch of Joan Jett’s classic ‘Bad Reputation’ and makes you want to slam dance with its guitar riffs and rollicking drumbeats."
