by Hillary Pasternak (@gemofpurestray)
Has anyone been asking for an album that can unite fans of Van Halen and Suicide? Doesn’t matter, we have it now. Jean Mignon is a solo project from NYC-via-Boston noise impresario Johnny Steines. He borrows the name of a 16th century French engraver to plunge into a breakneck, blistering river of feedback. Over the course of just under fourteen minutes, he shreds, howls, deadpans, and overall gives the impression of someone who might see that they have 666 monthly listeners on Spotify and say “Sick.”
There’s a fun thought experiment that listeners can do with noise rock of a certain type. Imagine the song you’re listening to with some cleaner production. Now maybe a rhythm section focused more on swing than speed. Last up, shift the vocals over so they’re more Robert Plant than Iggy Pop. There, you’ve got something that might have been reviewed with a chimp video in a different era of the music blogosphere. That’s far from a bad thing. In a landscape where the rock that rises to the top is often either gloomy or highly-produced, over-the-top pop bombast, this can feel fresh and fun. When you finally get around to discerning the lyrics on listen ten or twelve, you’re rewarded with gems like “Got a cock in my hand/Give me four on the floor.” (It’s possible Steines is reaching for irony on that one, but my enjoyment of that couplet is completely earnest.)
DIRTY MEAN FAST has a certain amount of old school hard rock in its DNA, particularly the big-stage pop metal of the 80s and the gritty garage rock of the 60s. Opening track “Cause I’m Scared” chugs almost like hair metal and features bursts of lightning-fast tapping to compliment the effect. “Sweet Burnin’ Hog” prominently features tambourine. If you squint, maybe even some straight-ahead blues rock. There’s a couple moments on “Well Fed Hog (Me)” where Steines sounds like George Thorogood on amphetamines.
If you’re looking for Sonic Youth’s cool-kid menace, this might not be the release where you’ll find it. DIRTY MEAN FAST reaches back further for its noise touchstones, to the early garage rock you might find on a Nuggets compilation. Slide a cut from this album onto your playlist after Link Wray’s seminal “Rumble” to make it make instant sense. This is a record that knows its rock history, but wears that knowledge lightly.
Maybe Jean Mignon is a venue for Steines to explore the history of hard rock through the lens of punk and noise. The last Jean Mignon release, AN/AL (Steines enjoys naming projects and releases so they are juuust slightly hard to Google) didn’t have as many echoes of arena rock lurking in its depths, but it did have a little 50s rock n’ roll – frenetic Bo Diddly jitter, blues riffs, and big, clean bass under the guitar distortion.
Blue Ray, Steines’ other recent project, had some of the fuzz, but a slightly wider scope. There’s nothing here like the synth-washed “Urgent Trash” off 2021’s Explain This. There’s definitely nothing like the brooding-in-bisexual-lighting dance-punk cover of “Wicked Game” (“I both hate that song and undeniably whenever I hear it I’m like ‘I like it,” Steines said of the Chris Isaak original in a 2021 interview).
In terms of simple quality level, there’s no loser between the two projects. It’s more a matter of taste and mood. If you want a sardonic tour of 2010s alt rock and perhaps some discernible lyrics, Blue Ray is your Steines project. If you want a blistering quarter hour from squarely within the punkier end of the noise rock landscape, you’re looking for Jean Mignon.