In The Pit of the Stomach
Album | We Were Promised Jetpacks
Glorious noise meets pop-song smarts.
In America, at least, We Were Promised Jetpacks seemed to come and go in a comparative blink around 2009: debut single "Quiet Little Voices" and a clever band name (one of the few full-sentence band names that doesn't completely suck) garnered quite a bit of early buzz, but the album These Four Walls didn't reach much beyond that initial cult interest. Two years later, the superior follow-up In the Pit of the Stomach might change that. Proudly inspired by their forebears and contemporaries on the Scottish post-rock and noise-pop scene, from old hands Mogwai and Arab Strap to Edinburgh contemporaries Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks have a knack for expansive quiet-LOUD-quiet dynamics. The difference here is that the drones and guitar distortion are in service to conventional pop structures: think vintage Yo La Tengo (or even early Radiohead), not Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Resulting songs like the gloriously chaotic "Human Error" and the swirling "Medicine" take root immediately; this isn't the kind of album that requires multiple listens to process, though the multi-faceted layers certainly repay close attention.
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Music Review
High Violet
The NationalFascinatingly sensual follow-up to their breakthrough record.
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