If you follow this thread regularly (and why wouldn’t you?), then you will remember at the end of my bands to watch in 2010 review, I asked; ‘Where are the jetpacks and robot slaves we were promised?’ Well, in a happy coincidence, I‘ve found them and their debut album.
We Were Promised Jetpacks are the latest Scottish indie band to sign with Fat Cat, a label that is becoming synonymous with signing up-and-coming very, very good bands from Scotland and propelling them to the heights of the UK music scene.
In fact, it came as a shock to many when it was announced that the label’s follow-up signing to Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit would be the Jetpacks. It was questioned whether they would have the chops to create an album that lived up to the hype of the label. Unfazed by this early criticism, the band has gone on to release an album that not only lives up to the hype but surpasses it completely.
These Four Walls is one of the strongest debut albums I have heard in a long time. The strength of the album comes in its simplicity. Jetpacks have not tried to do anything too smart; the tracks are built around strong rumbling drums which drive each one forward.
These drums are strikingly contrasted with the fragility and vulnerability of lead singer Adam Thompson’s vocals. If you were to look at Thompson’s lyrics on paper they would come across as decidedly ‘emo,’ but the sincerity of his delivery saves the band from this increasingly negative tag.
When you really break it down, We Were Promised Jetpacks has created a by-the-numbers, tick-every-box album. Normally, this would annoy me in the way that all manufactured American Idol-esque musical ventures do, but it doesn’t.
So I’m going to do something that I haven’t done before - and don’t really agree on doing - and give this album five stars. I don’t like doing this because… well, it’s ridiculous. It’s basically saying that no album will ever be better than this but will only be able to be as good, and that’s not true.
I’m going to do it anyway though, because I’ve just finished listening to the album and it’s left me feeling all sentimental and Scottish. More importantly, in one swift move We Were Promised Jetpacks have positioned themselves as the most exciting breakout band of recent times.
