We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls

The album’s opening line of “Right foot, followed by your left foot” reminds us that there’s no shame in taking things back to basics.

In a year where critics can’t sling enough superlatives at the sonic inventions and electronic manipulations of acts like Fever Ray and Animal Collective, We Were Promised Jetpacks serve as a great reminder that bands are still wholly capable of just plugging in guitars, rocking out, and sounding perfectly good.

Opening track ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning’ perfectly encapsulates everything there is to enjoy on this record as well as its frustrations. The main frustration, rife throughout the album, comes in the form of dull, lengthy build ups designed to create powerful pay-offs. The song swims around in a thin, dull texture for over two minutes until you’re positively aching for it to kick in proper but, when it does, the latter sections of the song demonstrate everything there is to like about We Were Promised Jetpacks. When the guitars finally crash in and the vocals really open up, it suddenly sounds stunning. And from thereon in, Jetpacks display a penchant for developing interesting song structures; morphing rhythms into continually evolving entities along with thick and interesting guitar interplay really making the most of the second guitar in a way many bands do not.

The lead single ‘Quiet Little Voices’ is the only track which maintains a constant full steam ahead momentum throughout its entirety and is especially welcome after a slight mid-album lull featuring the down-tempo arpeggios of ‘Conductor’ and the aimless noodling of ‘A Half Built House’. Adam Thomson puts in his best vocal performance of the album; his expansive bellow ringing out loudly and clearly, creating an impressively epic vocal line propelled by a relentless rhythm section. However, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ also happens to be the most two-dimensional song of the record with its rigid structure and big chorus complete with peppy (dare I say, clichéd?) woah-ah-uh-ohs.

Whilst I could be, perhaps rightly, berated for criticising ‘Quiet Little Voices’ for little more than having a distinctive chorus, it does stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to the more fluid and interesting song structures elsewhere on the album. Other tracks ebb and flow with no clear choruses or motifs to guide us around initial listens but are allowed to breathe and develop in their own interesting directions. In the context of the whole record, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ indeed sounds like the albums most powerful moment but, at the same time, just a touch unsophisticated and undoubtedly The Album’s Single.

One can’t help but wonder what We Were Promised Jetpacks would sound like if they took the sections of thick, abrasive guitar interplay and expanded them to create full songs rather than the fleeting pay-offs to overlong build-ups as they appear on the album. When Thomson completely unleashes his massive bellow to the backdrop of a wall of towering guitars is when the album truly shines. Sections of songs like ‘Short Bursts’ and ‘This Is My House, This Is My Home’ fully embrace and utilise this sort of texture to brilliant effect but, ultimately, such moments are infuriatingly rare. The listener can’t help but wish that We Were Promised Jetpacks would play to all their strengths simultaneously. Combining the full bodied guitar textures and soaring vocals of ‘Quiet Little Voices’ with the more interesting song constructions and arrangements found elsewhere on the album could have infinitely improved on what is already an enjoyable and solid debut.