We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Just as the greater half of Europe and Russia accepted in the eighteenth century that opera was remarkably better sung in the melodic tones of Italian, so too can it be considered that the Scottish accent is the most apt for shouting emotive indie-rock choruses. This is something that obviously hasn’t escaped the attention of Fat Cat/One Little Indian, whose new fold of acts has seen them take in Selkirk’s Frightened Rabbit and, more recently, We Were Promised Jetpacks from Edinburgh.

The remarkable thing about this debut album, ‘These Four Walls’ – aside from the enormity of Adam Thompson’s vocals – is the strength of the songs and the escalation they seek out of every corner. As our starting point ‘It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning’ takes the rhythmic drive straight from the bass guitar and filters in percussive stick clicks and glockenspiel. These play out like the pitter patter of rain and grow into something stormy and requiring lungfuls of tension to be released – especially growing from what could be called the second and third segments of the song: “Your body was black and blue,” towards, “I have to say goodnight, I’m leaving before you’re punching out my lights.’

It’s tempting on first listen to be channelled into listening just to Thompson, as ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ bursts from modest volumes to his town crier dynamics. Recorded virtually live, ‘These Four Walls’ retains the crackles within the permeable layer of produced sheen, until you can almost visualise Thompson standing two feet away from the microphone, red faced and bursting of bluster.

But stealing you away from this frontman is a fully sympathetic band with instruments as ranting and raving as they come. As if to prove this point, ‘Keeping Warm’ spends its first four minutes as an instrumental, building pressure and gathering pace, with a re-emergence of the glockenspiel until broken by a syrupy-er vocal melody that flits and finally relents to the guitars again.

Both man and machine have a tendency to repeat through the album’s 11 tracks, with themes and lyrics concerning youth, violence, fragility and place, refreshingly not wholly lost in their own romances. The closest we get is ‘Moving Clocks Run Slow’, whose admissions of “I can’t take my eyes off you” are almost masked in a whirl of guitars and synths (the latter very unassumingly played – thankfully). In the vein of repetition, ‘Quiet Little Voices’ is like a variation on the opener ‘It’s Thunder…’ but embraces the drums fully and keeps the bass undulating instead. And in an effort to match Adam’s power the guitars are amped up hugely over the chorus, nearly drowning the man.

‘This Is My House, This Is My Home’ is far more melancholic, with WWPJ leaving it until the final hill to kick up a fuss of drums and voice, notably some unabashed cymbal slapping. Likewise ‘An Almighty Thud’ is a tad more folk, replacing that frenzy of instruments with an acoustic and a more talkative way of singing. The final track relents without the blow-out of Thompson’s vocals and, as previously suggested, adds to the strength of the album without the escalation present on many of the other tracks.

The level of the ambition this album suggests should be promising enough to gather a stoic following. And certainly the passion achieved is something to be marvelled at, if a little frightened and intimidated by.