Like their labelmates and fellow countrymen The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks have forged a career on the quiet and without concession to fashion in terms of music or image.
It’s no criticism of ‘Unravelling’ to observe that it displays the big, dense sound and forceful dynamics of The Twilight Sad’s ‘Forget the Night Ahead’. It is, after all, an incredibly powerful album that crackles with both sonic and emotional intensity. The rolling drums and huge guitar bursts that define and dominate ‘Unravelling’ are undeniably strong, but the reason it works is because these elements are juxtaposed with soul-baring sensitivity. The effect isn’t so much bittersweet as simultaneously euphoric and tear-jerking.
If musically ‘Night Terror’ intimates stadium rock leanings,the dark images of the lyrical content and the unrepentantly strong Scots brogue in which Adam Thompson sings of hallucinations is a willful barrier between the band and the mainstream. Similarly, any resemblance to a Scottish Wedding Present that may pass on ‘A Part of It’ is more than countered by the uniqueness displayed on tracks like ‘Disconnecting’ and ‘Bright Minds’ which surges to a climactic swell of guitars, crashing cymbals and rolling piano to powerful effect.
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Chiming post-rock guitars provide the backdrop to Thompson’s bleak worldview on ‘Moral Compass’ and the penultimate track, the instrumental ‘Peace of Mind’ revisits their post-rock leanings, the bold drumming giving a solidity to the supple guitars before ‘Ricochet’ broods into the shadows with echoes of ‘Back to The Old House’ by The Smiths.
It’s a beautiful, majestic and poignant album that’s big on mood and big on sound, while at the same time musically varied and resolutely downbeat. It’s also conceivably their strongest work to date.
We Were Promised Jetpacks Online
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