Off the back of last year’s These Four Walls – which lots of people were very impressed with – We Were Promised Jetpacks are back to bridge the gap between albums with The Last Place You’ll Look. What marks this release aside from a mere stop-gap collection of B-sides that didn’t make it and live tracks cobbled together is that it’s a proper session. Handed a two-week deadline and their sound engineer Andrew Bush, the band set to work on recording a handful of tracks – both new and old.

‘A Far Cry’ starts proceedings and sets the tone early on. This is a darker, sinister, mournful WWPJ. Some may draw comparisons with label mates and fellow countrymen The Twilight Sad. Adam Thompson’s vocals are distant, sitting low in the mix “You cried like a child who’d just seen their own blood for the first time.” Out of a sparse arrangement of guitar melody and feedback the tracks slowly arrives with a military rhythm which shows the band exorcising the penchant for the post-rock styling of Explosions In The Sky that they hinted at on their debut.

Sticking with the new material, ‘The Walls Are Wearing Thin’ is a claustrophobic instrumental full of pops, crackles and what sounds like the din of background conversation looped back on itself until it becomes unintelligible. ‘With the Benefit of Hindsight’ follows suit with more moody guitar lines, thick with reverb and distortion. Strings and brass add flavour under the din of pounding drums, wall of guitars and chorus of shouted vocals.

Making the jump from These Four Walls are ‘Short Bursts’ and ‘This Is My House, This Is my Home’. Both tracks are reworked into more poignant incarnations of their former selves. Tempos are slowed and, again, the addition of both brass and strings lifts the tracks into their own. With the addition of orchestration and a wall of voices ‘Short Bursts’ is erring toward the more orchestral-led Sigur Ros. It’s magnificent stuff. On ‘This Is My House…’ Thompson delivers the line “Something’s happened in the attic, there’s no way I’m going up there” with a feeling of resignation and defeat. Couple this new sombre tone with weeping strings and distant pianos and this would have worked well as a reprise on the LP proper.

This EP may only include three new tracks – one of which is an instrumental – but to criticise it on that would be short-sighted. The material we’re already familiar with hasn’t just been given the “acoustic” or “stripped down” treatment, they’re fully realised reworkings. We Were Promised Jetpacks exhibit a maturity here that is quite unexpected. If this stop-gap marks a progression for the band rather, than just an experiment, then their next full length effort could be very interesting indeed.

Meursault

Scotland’s music scene is in rude health. Bands are blooming like it’s spring-time and the support of bloggers and punters has created a biosphere of creativity. So, in the first of what’s to become a regular column, Billy Hamilton – co-editor of The Scotsman’s Under the Radar new music site – delves deep into its tartan-toned landscape. At the bottom of the post, you can download a free mixtape featuring all of the bands mentioned.

If 2009 was Scotland’s cultural homecoming, then 2010 is the year its musicians need to pack their bags and finally move out.

For the bands that enthralled local gig-goers last year, the next twelve months are critical. Sure, the swollen cyber-palms of backslapping bloggers suggests a limited degree of success beckons, but true worth can only really be gauged if the tartan-kilted nest is vacated for a sojourn to more robust climes down south.

One glance at the upcoming gigs of our lauded young ‘uns shows a burning want to remain within the ball-court that begins and ends on both sides of the M8. Granted, there’s an admirable grit in believing success lies beyond fellating the barnacled cock of Big Ben, but even if the thrill of being sucked into a whorehouse of in-store shows and vacuous T4 slots isn’t your game, the possibility of discovering new audiences should be incentive enough.

In recent years, the most successful (and by successful I mean in terms of collecting critical adulation) Scottish bands to seep into the national hemisphere have been 4AD’s Broken Records and FatCat Records trio The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Yes, they may be enrolled on national labels but these acts had already proven themselves as capable wooers of unfamiliar crowds; each band confident in its ability to unravel the crossed arms of cynics based purely on their music. And it’s this sort of confidence the new breed of Scottish act has to exude in 2010. They need to move away from the Scottish music scene’s cotton-wooled bosom and furrow a pathway through the UK, not just across the Central Belt. Almost certainly, many will fail and return to familiar haunts to be consoled by familiar faces but, hell, at least they tried; at least they can say they gave it a stab, even if they didn’t draw blood.

Positively, 2009 saw the likes of Meursault, There Will Be Fireworks and Panda Su make their first tentative footsteps south – 2010 needs to see this turn into a concerted effort on a broader scale. Many a promising Scottish act has rotted in the gutter because of a lack of national exposure. To avoid joining them, the new batch of Scottish music makers needs to grab its future by the balls because, quite frankly, no one else will.

So, this inaugural dip into the Scottish music scene is not a start of year tiplist. It’s more a roll call of the bands that are closest to being ready to step up and make the breakthrough from local heroes to national runners.

Conquering Animal Sound
The tightly woven swell of Conquering Animal Sound provides the perfect antidote to this year’s Siberian weather front. As enchanting as a pixie snake charmer, the resplendent chimes created by Jamie Scott and Anneke Kampman have caused a drooling melee in the ranks of Scotland’s indie press. Whooshing to the gentle hum of Scott’s deft guitar, each arrangement is blessed by Kampman’s pin dropping mew. With a mixtape down and a tour of the UK to come, you’ll soon find yourself being conquered by this animal sound.
www.myspace.com/conqueringanimalsound

Dead Boy Robotics
Like running your nails against a grater to pulsing tribal rhythms, Dead Boy Robotics (DBR) are very much an acquired taste. As co-founders of the semi-defunct BEAR Scotland collective Mike and Gregor were left toiling in the wake of their more accessible counterparts. But 2009 saw the synth punk duo crank up the engine from nihilistic electro-boys to resplendent lug-rapists, coarsely running against the grain of Edinburgh’s bulbous folk scene. With a new EP of abrasive hexagonal-sonics due to be unleashed soon, 2010 promises to be the year Dead Boy Robotics shunt the gear-sticks into overdrive.
www.myspace.com/deadboyrobotics

Dupec
If We Were Promised Jetpacks are the delinquent younger brother of Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad, then Dupec are undoubtedly their intellectual cousin. Bestowing a scree of math signatures and hexagonal percussion over James Yuill’s emotive tones, the Auld Reekie trio’s first two EPs helped soil the already befouled underpants of Scottish bloggers. Now with support slots alongside Rollo Tomassi and Crystal Antlers peeking over the horizon, as well as a much needed trek south, 2010 should be the year slip from the shadows of their more renowned, if lesser accomplished, compatriots.
www.myspace.com/dupec

Meursault
It may have bookended the Noughties, but Meursault’s Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues represented a new dawn on Scotland’s musical terra firma. Scruffy and ill-fitting, every cut embodied the fabled do-it-together ethos of Edinburgh’s Bowery congregation. Live, Neil Pennycook’s inimitable warble strikes the first blow; his masterful bellow strangling the airwaves just as readily as it soothes them. But it’s the group’s concentrated melodics that’s the real draw. By spinning together the frayed ends of parochial folk with wiry electronica, Meursault bleed a sound quite unlike anything in Scotland. Now with album number two on the horizon, this is a band that now has to step over the cusp.
www.myspace.com/meursaulta701

Mitchell Museum
When Mitchell Museum breached the lower echelons of Scotland’s toilet circuit last year, gas canister in hand (seriously), a jumble of words filtered into the brainboxes of easily amused hipsters: Collective. Animal. Wannabes. Thankfully, the Glasgow quartet proved to be so much more. A gargling waterboard of effects may cornerstone their effervescent cacophonies, but the bubblegum melodies and flash-gun rhythms cut a more populous pathway than Baltimore’s finest. Their debut album should rear its cranium in early spring and, with it, expect your ear sockets to be plugged with nothing else.
www.myspace.com/mitchellmuseum

Yahweh
Yahweh must be churning bile at all the Arab Strap comparisons. Desperate for a new miserable mainstay to call their own, musos up here have been flinging the tenuous simile Lewis Cook’s way over the past year. But buried within the Glaswegian’s cascading synths lies a beautiful songwriting accord that’s more akin to the bearded lilting of Casiotone’s Owen Ashworth than Aiden Moffat’s monotonic yarns. Either way, Cook’s star is on the rise and his intelligent, heel-gazing pop is coming your way – be sure of that.
www.myspace.com/thisisyahweh

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Lists upon lists, upon lists… It really IS that time of the year. We’ve been keeping ours closely under-wraps, but now the time is here to unveil TLOBF’s Albums of 2009!

This year, we got each of our writers to nominate their favourite albums of the year, we counted up the votes, and spewed forth the results below. Easy. Always discussion points, I think our Top 10 is certainly one of the most consistently great lists for a number of years. It’s FELT like a good year for music and, despite or, indeed, because of, the rampant consumerism and X-Factor dominating charts, 2009 has felt pretty fresh. Anyway, enough of my ramblings, here we go…

Key: read TLOBF review // listen on Spotify

50. Why? – Eskimo Snow
49. There Will Be Fireworks – There Will Be Fireworks
48. Teeth of the Sea – Orphaned by the Ocean
47. Sufjan Stevens – The B.Q.E.
46. Steven R Smith – Cities

45. Slow Club – Yeah So
44. Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love
43. Noah and the Whale – First Days Of Spring
42. My Latest Novel – Deaths And Entrances
41. Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem

40. Micachu – Jewellery
39. Mew – No More Stories
38. Grammatics – Grammatics
37. Florence + The Machine – Lungs
36. David Sylvian – Manafon

35. Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle
34. Antony & The Johnsons – The Crying Light
33. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
32. St. Vincent – Actor
31. Manic Street Preachers – Journal for Plague Lovers

30. Loney Dear – Dear John
29. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
28. Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
27. Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
26. Russian Circles – Geneva

25. Future of the Left – Travels with Myself and Another
“The brevity and controlled fury of the songs and of the album as a whole keeps you constantly coming back. A very, very accomplished rock album.”
- Andy Johnson | June 2009

24. We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
“Imagine if the Twilight Sad weren’t writing songs about their childhood and school years, but actually living them, and making that same epic sound, but with all the exuberance of youth.”
- Adam Nelson | June 2009

23. Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Pains of Being Pure At Heart
“It won’t change the world and it’s not trying to, but sometimes it’s necessary to stand up and assert the importance of the things in one’s own little corner of the world.”
- Angelica Tatam | February 2009

22. Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More
“Mumford & Sons ideals and personal philosophy seep through the lyrics of the record to make it a far deeper and overall more rewarding listen than those made by their more chart-friendly peers.”
- Andrew Grillo | October 2009

21. The Leisure Society – The Sleeper
“The Leisure Society take you on an awe-inspiring musical adventure.”
- Lauren Down | March 2009

20. The Horrors – Primary Colours
“Simply put, Primary Colours is the most satisfying surprise that 2009 is likely to deliver.”
- Alex Wisgard | May 2009

19. Girls – Album
“Album proves that Girls might just be the greatest sixties revivalists there has been since the Brian Jonestown Massacre.”
- Alex Wisgard | October 2009

18. Fanfarlo – Reservoir
“Aside from the lush production and ornamentation, these are simply great songs. Ease your feet up and let Fanfarlo take some of the burden for you.”
- Matt Poacher | June 2009

17. Do Make Say Think – Other Truths
“Managing to place itself as a pleasing progression for established fans and an interesting introduction for new listeners. Another fantastic forty-three minutes to shut yourself away with.”
- Peter Bloxham | October 2009

16. Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
“Arguably one of Britains leading talents at a time when most (that’s most not all) of the interesting and alternative music is being made across the Atlantic, we really should cherish her.”
- Andrew Grillo | March 2009

15. Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
“Wilco have never put out a bad record, and Wilco (The Album) furthers this thesis. What’s more significant is the fact that the band knows as much. Wilco’s command of its own songwriting is as adept as any band in music, then or now.”
- Steve Lampiris | July 2009

14. Volcano Choir – Unmap
“Refreshingly inventive…stirs the emotions.”
- Leah Pritchard | September 2009

13. The Antlers – Hospice
“A spectral, messily humane work that is as sophisticated as it is affecting.”
- Tyler Boehm | November 2009

12. Fontän – Winterhwila
“Inventive and beguiling… Surely grounds for Fontän to warrant a chapter in the inevitable hot blooded tribute to the ever surprising and delighting Swedish music scene of the early 21st century.”
- Laura Snapes | September 2009

11. Atlas Sound – Logos
“An album that needs to be taken as a whole, it’s mood simply doesn’t lend to being chopped and changed. Suffice to say, it might be my favourite Cox release yet. Now that’s something special.”
Adam Nelson | November 2009

10. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Wild Beasts’ sophomore effort Two Dancers tones down some of the old world camp and eccentricty of their debut without sacrificing any of their singular character. Frontman Hayden Thorpe’ gymnastic falsetto is still there but somehow less of a ‘deal-breaker’, tempered as much by tighter song structures as a reigning-in of their oddball personality. If singing about revelrous modern Britain with a romantic melancholy and humourous eye recalls The Smiths, musically Wild Beasts are also informed by the 1980s ‘Brit jangle’ of Morissey & Co and the propulsive basslines of New Order. There’s lush, epic pop (‘We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues’), dreamy sensuality (‘When I’m Sleepy’), twilight ghostliness (‘Underbelly’), the album is a heady emotional experience, ranging from the achingly nostalgic to the jauntily redemptive – particularly the raffish roll call to “Girls from Shipley, girls from Hounslow” on ‘All the King’s Men’. If you had lost belief in British indie, this is the best place to rekindle your faith.
- James Dalrymple

09. Japandroids – Post-Nothing
The first thing that hits you is the energy of it all. It’s difficult to believe that two people can create this much noise, so the comparisons to Death From Above 1979 are obvious. However, ‘You’re a woman, I’m a machine’ was heavy on bass riffs, Post nothing is a mixture of lo-fi and noise pop. There’s even a hint of humour in there, with opening track ‘The boys are leaving town’ being the perfect thudding antidote to its polished, dad-rock counterpart. In short, it’s an album about being young, and you can hear the passion and intensity running throughout. Live, they’re just as good and it’s hard to feel anything but compassion for two men who’ve made such a tight, compact record filled with lines like “You’re as cold as ice, girl/I should know, I’ve been to the north pole”. Chaotic, messy and utterly, utterly brilliant.
- Matthew Britton

08. Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson, the witchier side of brother-sister duo The Knife, slip-skidded back onto our radar with this mechanically-minded dystopian disk, three years after the release of brooding synth-classic Silent Shout. No solo project could have come from a better place. Fever Ray takes a running jump from that cosier womb, peels back the duo’s dancier skins, and plumbs icier depths of the same alien waters. Producing what is undoubtedly one of the most melancholically personal releases of the year, female Swedish artists don’t get more extreme than Karin. Monstrous distortions see her stretched into a Mongolian throat-singer or a gravel-voiced phantom, a fitting herald for the menacing choruses and shivering industrial synths. From the girlish fantasies on ‘When I Grow Up’ to the uncensored cabin fever cries on ‘Concrete Walls’, this record is both inward-looking dream vision and outward-facing excavation. Rarely do we want to listen again and again to death, decay and dirty swimming pools.
- Rosie Jackson

07. The Twilight Sad – Forget The Night Ahead
Forget The Night Ahead found Scotland’s most serious young men using the critical success of debut Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters as a springboard to make a record even deeper, darker and more brutal. While their debut found an almost gleeful abandon in it’s intensity, this follow up was perhaps even more terrifyingly claustrophobic. James Graham’s Glaswegian brogue here recounted tales of “the people downstairs” and sounded at his most content as he promised “you and I will bury them all”. It was clear that the teenage discontent that had previously dominated his lyrics had matured somewhat. From the serrated shards of guitar that envelope lead single ‘I Became A Prostitute’ to the doom laden piano of ‘The Room’ this was a second album that was dense and initially impenetrable but numerous listens revealed glimmers of hope and eventually proved itself engagingly vital.
- Andrew Grillo

06. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix have been darlings of the indie and beautiful set since Alphabetical in 2004, but until this year the albums never seemed to live up to the singles or the band’s sexy aura. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is the sort of definitive statement that comes when a band embraces its sound in a big way. From ‘Lisztomania’ to ‘Girlfriend’, Phoenix stay locked in on their own brand of disco rock: instantly memorable melodies sung with a slight melancholy and the faintest French accent dart through bright synths and sharp guitars, while the laser-focus rhythm section keeps each song as danceable as it is cathartic. It isn’t that Phoenix is doing anything different than before, it’s just that on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart they do it better.
- Tyler Boehm

05. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
Following the bizarre intensity of Street Horrsing, sophomore effort Tarot Sport was very much the altered beast. Cruising along crushing waves of euphoric static, it’s an album characterised by luscious, spectral interludes and starlight melodies dancing around gargantuan planets and black holes. Both bleak and panoramic, rangy masterpieces ‘Space Mountain’ and ‘Surf Solar’ demanded their own gravitational pull – their insistent electronic pummel succeeding to orbital sound waves that energise the air around you, infinitely marching onwards into the next Solaris film score. Fuck Buttons instilled a surging beauty and harnessed a permeating, lucid power in Tarot Sport that few albums rarely possess – it was the transcendent siren call of oblivion, bewitching and beguiling you, enticing you to lose yourself in its dreamy vista. “Create your own narrative,” they said. And from the glorious slow motion dramatics of ‘Olympians’ to the fizzing synth-fuelled junkyard clatter of ‘Rough Steez’, Tarot Sport’s sonic monsters indulgently deliver on an album of truly biblical proportions.
- Reef Younis

04. The xx – xx
The xx were indisputably the buzz band of the year in 2009. They arrived so perfectly formed that people muttered about them being some put-together producer project, but scraping beneath the surface just revealed a huge songwriting talent, a minimalist’s knack for leaving out the right sounds as well as putting them in, and an intriguing empathic childhood friends story at the band’s core. The album, xx, smoulders away beautifully and wears it’s influences on it’s sleeve, coming on like a stripped-down Cure playing passages from the reverb-ridden hits of Chris Isaak. xx is a perfect late night record – sensual, subtle and spacious. Practically perfect, in fact.
- John Brainlove

03. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
Surging from Brooklyn in a tangle of primary colours and wacked-out harmonies, Dirty Projectors continued to stake their claim as The Most Exciting Band In Indie Rock Right Now with the triumphant Bitte Orca, who’s skewed, oddly mathematical guitar lines, fluttering croon and yelping, sprawling female harmonies proved itself the most compelling listen of 09. At first listen, Bitte Orca may seem like an artsy, undisciplined mess, but repeat listens reveals a taut logic behind Longstreth’s chaos, each guitar chime perfectly refracted by an impenetrable wall of caterwauls, courtesy of Amber and Angel. It’s no surprise then that such an off-kilter gem of an album has been lauded by almost every artist with a creative bone inside them – it’s sprawling influence ranging from from Icelandic chanteuse Bjork, who performed with Dirty Projectors in New York, to a collaboration with David Byrne and a highly-bloggable R&B re-work of ‘Stillness is The Move’ courtesy of Beyoncés quirky kid sister Solangé.
- Katherine Rodgers

02. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
It’s warm, it’s inviting, it’s joyful. Merriweather Post Pavilion is Animal Collective’s “pop” album. From the arena-size synth line of opener ‘In The Flowers’ to the swirling samples of ‘Bluish,’ it’s obvious that Merriweather is meant to be AC’s definitive record, a towering statement of candid existentialism: one level of enjoyment is the collection’s propinquity to humanity via childhood glee. That is to say, the songs haven’t become any less complex than previous outings (so some might take a listen or two to stick); instead AC paints its dense compositions with kid’s eyes, something not seen from the band in a long while. When Avey Tare sings, “I want to walk around with you” during the wonderfully elated ‘Summertime Clothes,’ you know he’s being nothing less than swear-on-the-Bible honest. Few albums of the year are able to satisfy listeners immediately while simultaneously rewarding them with repeat spins. Merriweather is one of those. Hell, it’s the best one.
- Steve Lampiris

01. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
It’s hard to be subtle when the entire music world is waiting to hear your record. But Grizzly Bear managed to not let the hype or anticipation affect them in any way, exceeding all of our grand expectations with the lush elegance of Veckatimest, which is so warm and inviting an album that the only thing inscrutable about it is the title. The songs are gorgeous and restrained; never reaching for anything more ambitious than their structure allows while crafting a sense of tranquility that still requires the listeners full attention. While ‘Two Weeks,’ ‘While You Wait For The Others’ and ‘Cheerleader’ garner most of the accolades, its the luxurious deeper cuts like ‘All We Ask,’ ‘Ready, Able’ and ‘Foreground’ that really makes Veckatimest a complete triumph. The production of Chris Taylor is understated and unobtrusive throughout, with the sonic flourishes added only to vitalize a mood or a movement while never getting in the way of the true spirit of the songs. Grizzly Bear have created a work of graceful refinement and tender charm that comes as close to being flawless as any record this year, without ever once trying to be perfect.
- Erik Thompson

We Were Promised Jetpacks, it could be said, have had some fairly lucky breaks recently. Signed to the brilliant FatCat label, they’re currently bumping along nicely on the coat tails of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, supporting both of them in a rather stellar US tour.

But this headline tour sees them back down to earth with a thud, playing teeny tiny sweatboxes to only a handful of people, three of whom are actually interested. And tonight’s venue is a particularly sweaty sweatbox (they weren’t joking with a name like Boileroom). Granted tonights crowd is probably larger than an average night here, and the band seemed genuinely chuffed with the turnout. No delusions of grandeur there.

Tonights show really needed to pack a punch– a show for 20 year olds by 20 year olds. And whilst the show certainly ticked those boxes, unfortunately it took a bloody long time to get there. The opening track didn’t kick off until a good couple of minutes of ‘atmospheric noise’ had been dispensed and eventually a decent guitar line appeared from the fuzz – hardly an energetic start to proceedings. And that seemed to be the order of the night – meandering, lack-luster intros and wandering middle eights that disrupted the momentum of what should have been a blistering set. ‘Quiet Little Voices’ and ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightening’ were definite high points – thundering drums, shouty sing-alongs and ripping along a breakneck speed. But more intense tracks like ‘Conducter’ fail to launch, with Adam Thompson delivering the vocals like a shopping list being shouted down a flight of stairs.

So WWPJ finish their set looking very much like a one trick pony. Albeit a damn good trick, but just the one nonetheless. Perhaps a little more research was required for this tour – they’re no longer playing to cavernous 1000 capacity venues whilst everyone’s at the bar but pubs and music rooms where the audience expect a set that goes at full pelt.

With the national proliferation of festivals, and ever-increasing popularity of festival-going-as-summer-ritual, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell one Weekend In A Field With Bands from another.  Not only in terms of lineup (with many of this summer’s big events sharing the same handful of big-name headline acts), but also identity: Glasto aside, what makes any one British music festival unique, distinctive and worth coming back to year on year?

Truck, now in its 12^th year on farmland in Oxfordshire, is managing a fine balancing act of growing a little larger every year while still keeping its warm, small, distinctly family and quite local feel.  The brainchild of the Bennett family (including brothers Robin and Joe, of Goldrush fame), Truck is perhaps best described as being like a Village Fete, but a bit bigger and with much, much better music.  That one of its main stages is called The Barn, and is, in fact, a cattle shed, only adds to its charm; as does the fact that catering is provided by the Rotary Club and the local vicar.

Saturday dawned with much promising sunshine, and one of those excellent unexpected festival discoveries, when the later-than-scheduled start of Their Hearts Were Full of Spring on the main Truck Stage saw us instead taking a punt in the smaller Village Pub tent (lineup curated by BBC Introducing), for Army/Navy.  A lovely opening act, their pleasant and jaunty C86-ish tunes and pretty la-la-la choruses started the event off nicely and they rose above the bass problems that beset them with aplomb.  So much did they remind me of  the more decent British indiepop type of a band from the 1980s that it came as a surprise to hear their L.A. accents between songs.  With an album due out in early October, they would be a definite recommendation.  Even their cover of Mary Nightingale’s ‘Right Back Where We Started From’ proved inoffensive, and a significant improvement on the original.

A dramatic change of pace, next, in the Barn, where Cat Matador’s dark gothic music – best compared to a more baroque Cure or, less kindly, one of those ubiquitous Joy Division-wannabee bands – soon became just a little dreary.  Panama Kings, on the main Truck Stage next, to their credit performed as if they were headlining a sell-out night at Madison Square Gardens but sadly, to their debit, brought stadium-pomp acts like U2 or Starsailor mostly to mind.

From Light to Sound were the next really satisfying musical experience of the day.  These unassuming-looking chaps peddle a pleasingly powerful line in shoegaze-cum-post-rock, the main influences being the holy trinity of ‘M’s (Mogwai, My Bloody Valentine, erm (Jesus and) Mary Chain), with an undercurrent of kraut discernable in the occasional motorik beat.  A song “based on an argument with our old guitarist” is suitably full of ire, and when their set ends, in the normally dance-oriented Beat-Hive tent, it feels premature.  Fanfarlo plus Truck Stage plus sunshine, next, equalled a pretty idyllic combination.  Simon Balthazar’s vocal seemed somehow stronger and surprisingly robust live, and the summery brass, perky violins and exuberant percussion all contributed to a feel-good atmosphere.  Closing with ‘The Walls Are Coming Down’, complete with five voice acapella introduction, then a sumptuous swell of trumpets, this was a very enjoyable, if not quite weekend-defining set.

data.select.party, playing their first ever festival, took half of their allotted time to really take off, but by the end I was more or less a convert to their confusing mix of sub-Foals math-pop and emocore.  Next up, however, were We Were Promised Jetpacks, who delivered one of the highlights of the whole festival.  With layers of emotional guitar beauty crashing and building right from the very outset of their set, moving from 0 to epic in about two minutes flat, a warm yet intense vocal sounding wise and world-weary beyond its owner’s years, this was enthralling from start to finish.  They wisely allowed each track to segue into the next so as to not break the spell that they were busy spinning, and by the time we reached the anguished, shouted delivery of “your body was black and blue” from ‘It’s Thunder And Lightning’, most of the audience surely had goosepimples.  Transcendent.

Ear-shredding feedback, heavy guitars and a dark, downbeat vocal (like a miserablist Evan Dando, in places) characterised A Place To Bury Strangers’ intense, and intensely physical performance, and it was no surprise when they took the “walk off stage with feedback still shrieking” approach to ending their set.

Damo Suzuki, ex-Can vocalist and improviser par excellence was just incredible, on the Truck Stage, next.  His hour-long set seemed to pass by in a blur of minutes, with one long piece stretched out, pulled back, expanded and contracted, in a harmonious cacophony supported by a backdrop of clearly incredibly proficient musicians, but always held together by Damo himself, his lovely hypnotic vocal spinning tale after tale in unintelligible words that still nevertheless somehow made the utmost sense.

From here the evening pretty much tailed off, with Sad Day For Puppets, bland in some places, quite sweet in others, and “does what it says on the tin” headliners Ash proving reliable, dependable but ultimately not, for me, unmissable.

Waking up to a much greyer Sunday, Maybeshewill were a splendid kick-start to the day.  Their post-rock was urgent and driving, with enjoyable switches of mood: sometimes heavy, riffy and aggressive (‘How To Have Sex With A Ghost’), in other places gentler or more euphoric and “up” (‘Co-conspirator’).  Piano samples and clips of spoken recordings added drama and beauty to proceedings, with the rant about the recession and the state of the world (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take any more”) on closing song ‘Not For Want Of Trying’ particularly relevant, topical but more importantly rousing and invigorating.

Pausing briefly to catch about the last fifteen minutes of Young Husband (a tuneful, babyfaced four piece with “grade five piano skills” and endearingly meandering vocal), it was then on to Talons, for some more instrumental post-rock, back in the Barn.  Their hard, abrasive use of violins was interesting, and made a nice change from the usual band tendency to throw strings in just to mellow things out, and they also had a good line in clatter-to-a-stop-then-restart guitar effects, and a commanding drummer.  They did suffer a bit, though, from being somewhat one dimensional in mood and dynamic, although I admittedly did only catch the first half of their set.

Calories were disappointingly unadventurous, sounding like any other earnest rawk band, then Telegraphs too, failed to really catch light, although they certainly appeared to be having a great time on stage, which always goes some way towards taking an audience along with you.

I had to deploy the power of the press pass for the first and only time to gain access to the over-subscribed Barn for And So I Watch You From Afar; and I was mighty glad that I swallowed any scruples and did so, watching them deliver another of the weekend’s outstanding performances.  Taut, tight, controlled yet at the same time fast-and-wild, they have co-opted some of the best bits of math, hardcore and post-rock and made them utterly their own.  As ‘S Is For Salamander’ sped up, roared, screeched and grinded remorselessly before slowing down to gather breath before ramping up again with gunshot drums and incoherent shouts, the first circle pit of the day – formed by rapt youngsters in mid-barn – seemed the only appropriate response.

Andrew Ferris – formerly front man with the mighty Jetplane Landing but today performing solo having been (temporarily) deserted by his new band – performed an acoustic set of covers and JPL favourites.  He showed all his customary enthusiasm and rhetorical skills, but just wasn’t as effective as a one-man-show.  Sky Larkin unfortunately failed to successfully translate their enjoyable songs from Really Rather Good album The Golden  Spike into live stormers – slightly bafflingly, since they are surely chock-ful of tunes crying out to be played in front of an audience. ‘Matador’, six songs in, worked best, but was not enough to stop things falling generally a little flat. Having tried twice to enjoy them live now, I think I’m just going to have to think of them as one of those “better on record” kind of bands.

Over on the Market Stage, DJ “Whispering” Bob Harris was curating the day’s proceedings, and introduced festival favourites Danny The Champ (billed as a solo set from ex-Grand Drive singer, but in fact joined by several guest musicians) to a packed tent.  This provided a mellow interlude of gentle alt.country, and an atmosphere that was very, laconically, enjoyably, “Truck”.  Next, in the same venue, The Incredible String Band’s Mike Heron delivered a “kind of a hippy set” to celebrate this year’s Woodstock anniversary, accompanied with jaw-dropping beauty by his daughter Georgia Seddon.  Gifted with a seriously stunning voice, and also a talented songwriter and pianist, it was Georgia’s presence that really made this set so riveting, with her composition ‘Snow’ standing out as the highlight.

Chew Lips, in the Beat-Hive, offered a contrast to all this mellow niceness, in the form of brassy cheesy female vocals over “is it the 80s again?” synths.  Fairly obvious, yet effective in its incitement to dance, this was one for those of the inclination for a bop with a bit of pop.  Ghost Of A Thousand, next, whose shouty rock wasn’t really our cuppa, and whose front man seemed to be on a tiresome mission to swear with Every Other Fucking Word between songs, like a kid who’d just discovered the f-word.

And so as the rain came down and the festival drew to a halt, we chose to forego Supergrass, headlining the main Truck Stage, in favour of the quite wonderful, quirky, and entertaining Yacht back in the Barn. Their original use of video projections, all featuring mystical and symbolic triangles, the Google Maps illustration of their flat in Portland, Oregon (which every member of the audience was invited to visit), and their stylish, stylised dance moves all rendered the music itself (electro-dance, clearly no stranger to Talking Heads and Devo style post-punk) almost secondary.  As “think positive” type slogans flashed up on the screen, and the audience shouted them, cult-like, back at the band (sample: “I will love”, “I will not attack”), the pelting precipitation outside ceased to matter as we all immersed ourselves in Yacht-world.

Photo credit: Joe Singh

Maybe it’s something to do with shadows. Like, living in one. I can’t be the only one who struggles to differentiate a Canadian accent from an American one. Do Americans know the difference between a Scottish accent and and English one? I dunno, but it seems that this weird subverted national identity stuff has its upsides: a few years ago, all of Canada seemed to get their shit together and collectively “fuck this” and make some fantastic records, roughly starting with Funeral and going through various degrees of awesomeness, and, as evidenced by TLOBF’s recent Oh! Canada compilation, they’re still going.

Sometime recently, a similar thing seemed to happen in Scotland. It’s hard to tell quite where it started or when, but in recent times The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit released probably the best albums of 2007 and 2008 respectively, and so far in 2009 Scotland has produced at least three of the year’s finest, from Camera Obscura, My Latest Novel, and now, We Were Promised Jetpacks.
It all comes a little bit out of no-where. It’s not exactly a subtle album. Riffs and hooks compete with each other for your attention all over the place, but the goodness is strangely evasive. I think it’s because a lot about this album is just so expected: unlike label-mates The Twilight Sad, there’s no a great deal of surprise here, even the lyrics at times are predictable (can you guess what lyricist and singer Adam Thompson rhymes “lightning” with?), but to criticise the album for that would be missing the point. Following the rules and sticking to convention doesn’t necessitate boredom, and here it definitely doesn’t. Despite knowing when the guitarist is gonna step on that effects peddle, when the drums are gonna suddenly kick back in again and breathe new life into a song they were pretending was over even though you KNEW it wasn’t over and it was going to start up again, despite anything, you get carried away on the band’s undying enthusiasm for what they’re doing, for their songs about being young and being in a band and doing crazy shit and playing instruments very very loud and writing eight-minute songs just because they can. If you’ve ever listened to the Twilight Sad, you’ll know that when I say WWPJ are “not quite Twilight Sad”, that is far, far away from being an insult.

I’m not actually sure how old WWPJ are, but from pictures I’ve seen, they look to be barely out of school. So imagine if the Twilight Sad weren’t writing songs about their childhood and school years, but actually living them, and making that same epic sound, but with all the exuberance  of youth. The fact that WWPJ go over the top sometimes, that they seem rough around the edges and naive and do silly things like putting a two-and-a-half minute instrumental inbetween the album’s best two songs simply makes them all the more loveable because if this album is about anything it’s about the folly of youth and the ambition that characterises it. “You can learn to talk in your own time, you’re so young”, sings Adam Thompson on the penultimate track. Coming so late in the day it seems like a self-referential nod to the fact that, yeah, maybe we could have done things better. But we’re young. We’ll learn in our own time. And we’ll come back with something even fucking better.
86%

We Were Promised Jetpacks on Myspace

Prego

Hinterland Festival is not a new concept – a multi-venue festival, where one wristband allows you access to hundreds of bands, art events and other goodies. Camden Crawl has been following this blueprint for over 10 years now. However, the concept seems strange and new to the people of Glasgow who had not experienced something on quite this large a scale before. True, there was Tryptich and now Stag & Dagger has made it’s way to the home of the brave, but Hinterland Festival is big, bold and ambitious, especially in these economically trying times

A few weeks before Hinterland is set to hit Glasgow’s most prestigious, cool and underground venues, there’s news that Homecoming Festival has been cancelled. The industry’s been wobbly for a while and it remains to be seen whether Hinterland will triumph.

Thursday 30^th April 2009
Thursday day, the box office is running slightly behind and Hinterland’s organisers are scurrying around, organising last minute guestlist changes and other bits and pieces. From around 12 noon, press and ticket holders dribble-in and by 1pm, there are huge queues as people hit the ticket exchange in the early afternoon. You can start to feel the buzz now as the kids don their shiny wristbands and head out into Glasgow’s grey urban wilderness.

As the evening skies descend upon Hinterland’s venues, you can almost smell the eager anticipation in the air. The bands and punters alike seem a little tense, this being Hinterland’s first year. Who knows what to expect?

We head down to The Classic Grand. The venue looks a little dilapidated from the outside but it holds two floors of music and dancing till the wee hours. London promoters and PRs, A Badge of Friendship, host downstairs events boasting a alt-rock line-up with Sucioperro, Brigade, Geordi La Force and 85 Bears. Upstairs, This Is Music, showcase sets from Fanfarlo, Meursalt, Orphans & Vandals and Trailer Trash Tracys. So that’ll be alt-rock goodness downstairs with hip ‘n’ trendy indie upstairs – sounds good to me, a bit of variety.

The venue is mostly empty as doors open, both upstairs and down. However, as 85 Bears hit the stage, folk seem to be coming in out of nowhere. 85 Bears mesmerise the crowd with their hypnotically addictive loops and melodies. They’re really revving-up the audience, showing these gig-goers that instrumental music can have a groove and a bit of bite.

Meanwhile, upstairs is a little empty with Trailer Trash Tracys bringing their own brand of “trendy” post-rocking music mastery to the fore. It’s a little like a watered-down My Bloody Valentine, boring in parts, nice in others. There’s not much of a buzz and maybe not the best choice for a first-on slot but they play reasonably well, nothing spectacular.

Geordi la Force

And so downstairs for Geordi La Force; no one really knows what to make of this one-man-one-laptop performance. The mistake that people often make is believing Geordi will either bless us with ambient electro musings or go down the Aphex Twin route. However, he sticks two fingers up at that notion and plays lightning fast riffs over grooving rock melodies. The music is highly technical but really listenable. There are also some really gorgeous introspective moments during the set too, good to see some variety during the set. The visuals that accompany GLF are a must. The “man of mystery” proclaims, two songs in: “The laptop is now going to read your minds…” and so in between each song is a random, yet highly comedic, set of clips form Robbie Williams falling on his arse on stage to Chip N Dale: Rescue Rangers. By the end of his set, Geordi La Force has amassed quite a crowd. Love him or hate him, he’s definitely a boundary pusher and one to watch on the alt-rock circuit.

We unfortunately miss Orphans & Vandals for Geordi La Force. Seemingly, it’s still a little quiet upstairs, which is a shame as Meursalt take the stage. However, people are slowly flooding into the 550 capacity room but the buzz is lacking. Perhaps This Is Music’s bands would have been better in a smaller venue.

Next-up, Brigade, a London band featuring Will Simpson. Funnily enough, Will’s brother, Charlie (Fightstar) is playing a gig down the road at the ABC tonight and his younger brother, Edd (Prego) is due to play Hinterland the next evening – it’s definitely a family affair! It’s a little sparse as Brigade burst onto the stage with their explosive sounds. When you say “rock band”, Brigade really fit the bill. They try and mix up interesting melodies with huge walls of noise. The boys seem to be enjoying the night and eventually, a few hardcore Brigade fans make their way to the front and it’s not long before others follow.

We nip upstairs quickly for Fanfarlo. These Londoners play to quite a good crowd, despite the poorer turnout at the beginning of the evening. The music is gorgeous and it puts a smile on everyone’s faces. We’re also starting to hear reports from friends who’ve been hoofing it around Glasgow, visiting Hinterland’s other venues

Friends tell us that there’s a huge queue outside Nice N Sleazy to see Desalvo and The Fall, naturally, it’s just about at capacity. The Invisible are playing to a huge sweaty audience, Metronomy are becoming one of the highlights of Hinterland’s debut evening of musical delights, Cassidy opened Pivo Pivo to a full-on crowd and played a great set and folk are impressed and mystified by Edie Sedwick.

Orphans & Vandals

And so to the final band of the evening - Sucioperro. Sucioperro’s Dragon also features in Marmaduke Duke, Simon Neil’s (Biffy Clyro) latest musical incarnation. Dragon and The Atmosphere (Simon Biffy) are steadily gaining success with their new musical adventure as Marmaduke Duke, however, Sucioperro are not to be ignored. These boys play great, complicated, heartfelt rock. They are tight, succinct and have attracted a solid crowd tonight singing along with most of the band’s hits.

Sucioperro have rounded-off our evening perfectly. All the bands are milling about afterwards; chatting to each other, fans, press and the general consensus is this has been the perfect Hinterland opener. As A Badge of Friendship hit the decks, the revellers hit the dance floor to Max Tundra, Public Enemy and a little Soundgarden. We can’t wait for Friday!

Friday 1^st May 2009
It was a long night last night but bleary-eyed gig goers are not deterred by this at all. Another busy day at the box office it seems for staff means a night of good vibes ahead.

There’s an air of real excitement tonight as some quality bands finish Hinterland’s first year with a bang – Jeffrey Lewis, Sons & Daughters, Broken Records and This Will Destroy You are all firmly placed on punters’ agendas tonight so it seems.

First-up over to King Tut’s, hosted by A Badge of Friendship again, for Elks. The venue is really dead as the band start their set but they seem to win over the audience as they hit their stride around four songs in. Heads are bobbing, feet are tapping and, looking around the room, it’s evident that folk are really impressed with Elks’ honest, sincere and in-your-face approach to indie-rock that’s missing from the genre.

We quickly run up to The Art School, where Gigwise are hosting the proceedings, as London band, Phantom grace the Art School’s stage. They’ve been described as many things – Tarantino-esque, sweetly sinister, likened to Ennio Morricone – but I’d say they are simply perfection. The first aspect that strikes us is their perfect appearance, retro, glamorously classy but the music is simply divine. Their set is filled with a modern film noire themed quality to the music. Crystal clear guitars and haunting female vocals over firm beats really pound into the very heart of your soul. Beautiful.

We quickly run back to Tut’s where the venue heaves with Jeffrey Lewis fans. As Jeffrey hits the stage, the venue stops letting people in. It’s so great to see Jeffrey Lewis and his band The Junkyard, play a smaller venue like this, which actually suits his music so much better. His honest lyrical style and music bring such a cheer to the venue tonight. I’m almost dancing with happiness; this is definitely my Hinterland highlight so far.

It’s over in almost a flash, I enjoyed the set so much I hardly notice the time and we stay for Dinosaur Pile-Up. Dinosaur Pile-Up are part of the amazing Leeds music seen that has nurtured bands such as Sky Larkin, Wintermute and These Monsters amongst others – an all of whom are playing Hinterland too. These guys make quite a racket. There’s something almost early Melvins about this band and that is never a bad thing. The venue is not as busy as it was for Jeffrey Lewis & the Junkyard but for a band of this nature, there are still a fair few people here, at least 150 – not bad for a Leeds band in Glasgow town.

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Tut’s finishes relatively early so it’s aftershow time! The Fruitmarket is the place to be for all Hinterland partygoers. As we arrive, Alex (Skulljuice) is already deep in tune “spinnage”. Hinterlanders seem to love the odd noises and dance-based beats. Not really our thing, we do a bit of people watching for a while until The Count & Sinden come one. As this DJ duo hit the decks, everyone is really revved up and, of course, Simian Mobile Disco’s DJ set round-off a perfect two days of music, art, clubs and fun!

Having experienced many a festival in my time, Hinterland was very well organised. Despite the price, which may change next year if the promoters take note, many people I talked to had the chance to see at least six, if not seven bands per evening. There were queues at some venues but the waiting times weren’t long and buzz bands like Glasgow’s We Were Promised Jetpacks, were always bound to attract a huge crowd in their hometown.

The idea of smaller bands having their time to shine amongst the big boys is a great idea. It’s also good to see a blend of genres from rock, doom and indie to dance, experimental music, electro and a plethora of DJ sets around the city. Hinterland should definitely be an example to all multi-venue festivals – defiant in the face of “selling out”.

The organisers brought a little cheer to a usually dreary Glasgow and, more importantly, Hinterland brought bands, musicians, labels, A&Rs and thousands of people to a small city in a time of economic crisis. We should all support independent events in the hope of boosting our local economy, discovering a new band or two and bringing a little cheer in what seems like a serious time for all of us. Hinterland is shining the light, let them lead the way!

Photographs courtest of Heidi Kuisma

The mighty We Were Promised Jetpacks will embark on their first major UK tour this summer.

We’ve been banging on about these guys for a while now, even going so far as to interview them, but now we’ll get a chance to see what they’re all about.

They’re releasing the single ‘Quiet Little Voices’ on 4th May, proceeding the June release of their highly anticipated debut These Four Walls.

April
30 Hinterland Festival, Glasgow

May
01 Hinterland Festival, Glasgow
14 Water Margin, Brighton (FatCat Showcase – Great Escape Festival)
15 DrownedinSound Stage, Brighton (Great Escape Festival)
23 Liverpool Sound City, Liverpool (supporting Sky Larkin)

June
09 Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh
10 Doghouse, Dundee
15 King Tuts, Glasgow
16 Night & Day, Manchester
17 Bodega, Nottingham
18 The Lexington, London
19 The Cockpit, Leeds
20 The Head of Steam, Newcastle
28 Outsider Festival, Rothiemurchus – Cairngorms National Park

July
24 Wickerman Festival, Dundrennan

There was a shard-sharp moment during this gig when everything that Frightened Rabbit stand for was frozen into a blinkless instant of time. The band had left the stage after a crazed hour of redrawing the sainted contours of The Midnight Organ Fight and in that low mumbling hum before the encore Scott Hutchinson had evidently snuck back out with an acoustic guitar. I heard him before I saw him – the first strains of ‘Poke’ ‘poke at my iris, why can’t I cry about this’ – and sought out the source of the sound. Once it became apparent that he was at the lip of the stage, alone and washed in blue light, a total silence fell across the room – it bred, the way noise does sometimes, quickly enveloping everyone. I’ve seen reverence at gigs before but this was something else, a giving over, an open gesture of respect for the song and for Hutchinson’s lyrics. Whatever the reason for this – and it might just be something as simple as an honest band writing superbly well about the universal theme of feeling like shit, mostly – Frightened Rabbit have dug their way into people’s hearts. It’s an immense thing to behold.

There had been an odd humid haze about London all day, a softened focus. St. Pancras Station, always looming, looked awry, tilted at an awkward angle – it dragged the eye upwards; the rest of Kings Cross by contrast, always a haunt of street-babblers and wall-eyed nasties was seething, crouched. In the heat it was like a hair-clogged plughole. It was almost a relief to get into the gothic splendour of The Scala…

We Were Promised Jetpacks looked wired up there, tense. And so young. I assume this was the biggest place they’d played up until now. I suspect it won’t be for long. They sounded huge, starting with ‘Keeping Warm’ – the eight-minute epic from their soon-to-be-released debut album. They followed it with their new single, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ which is a great shovel of a song with Adam Thompson roaring out the chorus with real passion. It was a common theme, and you get the sense that this band really means it. There’s a point during ‘Thunder and Lightning’ where Thompson backs off from the mic and bellows ‘your body was black and blue’ and he’s shaking with the delivery of it and looks like he might buckle under the weight of the thing. The effect on the crowd is palpable and by the end of their set they get a dirty great roar of approval.

By the time Frightened Rabbit came on the Scala had filled to bursting and the heat had nearly doubled. You could feel it rising from the concrete floors. The band started with ‘I Feel Better’ from The Midnight Organ Fight and to be honest the sound wasn’t quite there. But the initial moments were all about the response, and at the end of ‘Fast Blood’ which again sounded a little thin, you could see from the band’s reaction that this was a special moment, the end of a special era. Hutchinson announced that this was the biggest crowd that had ever come out to see them and that, as it was almost exactly a year since the release of …Organ Fight, they were celebrating.

They proceeded to play pretty much the entire record, most of which was at an odd sort of half-tempo, with Scott and his bearish brother seeming to live every minute of every track. Which I guess is a kind of perfect representation of what Frightened Rabbit are – a ramshackle, dishevelled, waywardly talented band making raw, honest music into which people seem to be able insert themselves wholly, carelessly. And Scott Hutchinson is the personification of this: a shambling figure, yet a man who seems to inspire a rare kind of warmth. And when ‘The Modern Leper’ had come and gone, and ‘Floating in the Forth’ – to date, the single most uplifting suicide song I can think of – had filled the air with its pulsing warmth there was such a sense of camaraderie in the air that the band could seriously have done anything and it wouldn’t have mattered. What they did do was to play two tracks from Sings The Greys (‘The Greys’ and ‘Square 9′) and proceeded to sound the best they had done all night and became, for a time, a fucking huge rock band.

Then came the time of ‘Poke’ and everything reached a perfect sense of peace. We were thanked again for coming out, and for supporting the band through everything. We were even thanked for being nicer than a London crowd ever should be. We know that Hutchinson has been off writing the new record at a sea-side house in Fife, and we can probably infer that the collective exorcism of The Midnight Organ Fight is now complete. It’s time to move on and now I guess we wait for what comes next… They finish, inevitably, with ‘Keep Yourself Warm’ and again they sound immense – especially Grant Hutchinson, belting at his kit like a raging animal. It’s been a triumphant evening and it’s impossible not to feel happy for the band. The roar that comes as they leave the stage for the final time mingles with all that trapped heat and is carried out through the doors into the waiting fists of the Pentonville Road.

I have a new love in my life. Just don’t tell my fiancee. They’re a bunch of lads from Scotland… so she might not get TOO jealous… but they’ve convened under the title of We Were Promised Jetpacks (quite possibly one of the best band names for AGES), and they create some of most emotive and stirring music I’ve heard for ages.

Their sound finds itself charging through the middle ground of The Twilight Sad’s dense, atmospheric sheen’s of music and Frightened Rabbit’s guitar-pop and meaningful lyrics of real-life problems and moments. They’ve signed to Fat Cat records as well, which suggests that someone knows what they’re doing on both sides. I’ll be honest, since their debut album These Four Walls was sent to me, I’ve listened to very little else. I love the charging guitars, the soaring choruses, the sheer ENERGY that they’ve got going on. It makes me want to drown in their music. Their wall of guitars sounds like a massive torrent of rain – covering every part of your being, drenching you to the core in their atmospheric wall of noise.

So, I thought, I’d hassle Mike Jetpack and find out a bit more about the band.
For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
1; You might like our music, which is fun.
2; You might hate our music, which is also fun.
3; You might have no opinion of our music, which isn’t really a reason, so I guess there’s only two.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
There was a time when we first moved to Glasgow (we grew up and went to school in Edinburgh, then three of us moved to Glasgow and one of us to Stirling) and started playing proper gigs in proper venues. Playing in Edinburgh before was weird as we were underage, so ended up playing some odd nights. Which was cool, but when we moved to Glasgow we were of drinking age and we started playing places likeSleazy’s and whatnot. We felt like a proper band, so from about then, probably.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
Really we just try and write a song that’s better than the last one we wrote. I suppose we started trying to write songs that all four of us liked, which was pretty unusual. These days we usually try and do something in particular, like “lets have loads of noise in this one”, or more recently “this make this one really rock and roll!”. In the end they all end up sounding pretty much the same anyway…

Name your Top 5 records.
From a band point of view, stuff that all four of us like:
The Midnight Organ Fight – Frightened Rabbit; Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters – The Twilight Sad; Red Yellow and Blue – Born Ruffians; Boxer – The National; and the new demo by an Edinburgh band calledDupec.

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
The first one was a battle of the bands at our school in Edinburgh, and it was a success!

What one piece of criticism has stuck in your mind and was it justified?
There’s no one particular incident, I don’t think. We’re pretty good at getting criticism, we can take it pretty well. We know we’re not the best band ever or anything like that, so when people say we’re not, we kind of agree! We get more annoyed when the person doing the review has clearly put no effort into giving us a proper listen. Or has just lifted comparisons that they’ve read somewhere else and assumedthats what we’re like. So, we’re fine if you hate us, as long as it’s not lazy journalism!

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
University. It really gets in the way sometimes. It’s been ok though, Fatcat have been great about us pacing ourselves so we can finish off at uni.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
Oh, so little. Nothing at all, I’m sure. We’re all still pretty young, so haven’t had to look for a “career” yet. So propably starting to do that.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Our bassist Sean once worked ridiculous hours at a bottle factory. He’d have to wait by the belt as boxes came along and move them to different positions. It soundedmonotinous for five minutes, but he was at it for hours on end. We woke up one morning when we hasn’t working and found everything nearby at the the end of the room, as he’d moved it in his sleep. True fact!

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Ok, the theme is “Bands that are our friends, and are completely brilliant and you can listen to the songs on myspace or on the internet or whatever”:
1. Seek Cover – Endor.
2. Sapphire – Lyons.
3. Guts – Over the Wall.
4. Therapeutic Song – John B Mckenna.
5. I can count to twelve – Dupec.

We Were Promised Jetpacks on Myspace