Album review: We Were Promised Jetpacks: 'These Four Walls'

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS: 'These Four Walls' (FatCat)

As well has having probably the coolest name on the planet, Glasgow’s We Were Promised Jetpacks make one hell of a fantastic racket. ‘These Four Walls’ sounds absolutely monumental, a towering inferno of cacophonous instrument rape built on a penchant for the most intense sort of crescendo known to man. Virtually all of the album’s eleven tracks are addictively restless, starting out quiet but curiously sporadic, goading the listener into keeping a spasmodic sort of time when there is none being kept within the song. This lends a raw flavour to the music, augmented by a smattering of jagged, scattershot guitars and unusual timbre, upon which the band add layer after layer of sound with each passing minute, before finally reaching a sort of cathartic apex; the auditory orgasm, if you will. It’s the same tactic that’s allowed The Arcade Fire to become such critical stalwarts, except enhanced tenfold by the sheer bombast of the noise that the band make. They’re more like a comprehendible Die! Die! Die! or pretenders to Biffy Clyro’s throne, using the less radio-friendly song structures of their earlier material.

The Biffy comparison cuts to the heart of WWPJ’s other strength: their preoccupation with domestic ubiquity. The album’s lyrics are very much in the tradition of the kitchen sink, relating tales of urban isolation and quirky melodrama, and it works beautifully. ‘Roll Up Your Sleeves’ worms its tale of love teetering on the brink around a seasonal metaphor, but ensures that the story remains grounded with the use of stark verisimilitude, while ‘This Is My House, This Is My Home’ has a deliciously dark mystery at its core, predicated on the anaphoric line ‘something’s happened in the attic/There’s no way I am going up there.’ Interestingly, while the songs often feature intense instrument battering, there is a sort of potent beauty running throughout, sustained by a masterful grasp of melody. Just listen to the xylophone-led melancholy of ‘The Conductor’ or the weather-beaten ‘Short Bursts’; you can’t help but be stunned by the elegiac wonder of it all. And then there’s the otherworldly ‘Keeping Warm’, a track so epic, it threatens to swallow the entire solar system.

At times, We Were Promised Jetpacks open themselves up to accusations of self-indulgence, but the unquestionable joy of the band’s extravagantly intense sound should quickly silence any critics. ‘These Four Walls’ is an absolute gem, a record dripping with visceral delights that demand you return again and again, seeking the same thrills but all the while discovering spectacular new ones. It claws its way out of its own four walls, restlessly hammering at your eardrums until you just can’t help but fall hopelessly in love with it. You can have your jetpacks guys; we’ll take your music. (9/10)