We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Another rather late set of comments on this Scottish bunch of lads. The debut album, out on Brighton based Fat Cat Records has been with me a while and has earned a nice little warm corner in my heart.

I think that rather strangely I first heard them via the KEXP posts from Seattle when DJ Shannon got onto them on a trip to the UK. Nothing was available for some time unless you managed to get to one of their gigs, usually north of the border. But the album is now here and well worth geting hold of.

They sit in that clutch of new Scottish bands that includes Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad as well as There Will Be Fireworks (of whom more later when their debut hits the mat). In addition to the always alluring Caledonian-ness of the band they have that wonderful energy and immediacy that often gets lost with the passing years. But right now the chaps are young and eager and Adam Thompsons vocals are full throated and uninhibited, in the sort of way that, for example, flamenco singers really let rip, and even if the notes are sometimes not quite nailed, that isn't the point, the point is in the delivery and the gusto behind it.

That said, alongside full ahead stuff like Quiet Little Voices and Ships With Holes Will Sink, there are other sides to the Jetpacks like Conductor and This is My House, This is My Home which is both quieter and stranger.

The chaps are out on tour later this year in the UK (over the summer in the US alongside Frightened Rabbit), and I shall be trekking along tothe dubious delights of The Cooler in Bristol to experience them live and firsthand.

Fat Cat Records website

We Were Promised Jetpacks Myspace

Frightened Rabbit Myspace

Twilight Sad Myspace

There WillBe Fireworks Myspace

Photo credit: Neil Thomas Douglas