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Mean Jeans shared the song 'Stuck In A Head,' the second single off their upcoming album 'Gigantic Sike'.

"You basically have to be an idiot or a psycho to continue playing in a band in your 30s while trying to survive in the real world — but that’s a good thing," posits Mean Jeans vocalist/guitarist Billy Jeans, as he stretches out on a beach in Lake Tahoe. (No, seriously.) He's not only catching some rays but reflecting on the inspiration behind his band's new album, Gigantic Sike, out August 30th on Fat Wreck Chords.

"A gigantic sike is an escape plan,” he says. “It's the idea of being able to just drop a big 'ol whoopsie-daisies on everything we've done up to this point — the songs, albums, the band's existence, my own personal existence — and play the whole thing off as a goof. It's a joke on the fantasy of sneaking out the backdoor on a crummy identity you didn't necessarily mean to create.”
 
Gigantic Sike is Mean Jeans' fourth full-length — or fifth, if you include last year's Jingles Collection, a 23-song assemblage of unsolicited product jingles written for brands like Totino's, Skoal and Mountain Dew. ("I think the jingles are our best work, but I guess you can't mosh to windshield-wiper endorsement ballads," Jeans explains.) The trio recorded Gigantic Sike's 11 songs over three days in Los Angeles in December 2018 (the first day was spent learning the tracks; the next two spent hammering them out). Like all prior Mean Jeans albums, Gigantic Sike falls into the category of three-chord, heavily Ramones-influenced party punk, though there's a bit of a twist this time.
 
"These songs are fun and fast, but at their core, they're about the bleak existence of a party boy," Jeans says. "All of my favorite Mean Jeans songs have an element of sadness, cynicism, or darkness to them. They're dumb, but there's honesty in the lyrics."