One of the therapeutic aftereffects of "best of year end" lists is beating yourself up over the exceptional stuff you missed in the prior year. 20/20 hindsight can be both a blessing and a curse—A curse, in that it points out all your too obvious faults; while a blessing because for those of us who are constantly self-evaluative, it makes you want to deep-dive into all those bands you may have missed while compiling your oh so precious Top 10 list. These Four Walls by We Were Promised Jetpacks is one of those albums that exemplifies just how blind one can be to the obvious. There is no band, or album, closer to my 2008 favorite The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit than Walls / Jetpacks, so it is slightly embarrassing that this one went unnoticed. Better late than never, I suppose. An added bonus, the two bands are different enough so that the magnitude of each one does not interfere with the other. These Four Walls shares the impassioned, heavily accented vocals and vigorous strummy guitar that made Frightened Rabbit's sophomore effort so addicting, only Jetpacks puts on a slightly rougher sheen with a more punk rooted sound and occasionally drunken sailor fashioned vocals. "Quiet Little Voices" and "It's Thunder and It's Lightning" top my list of favorites.We Were Promised Jetpacks will be playing at Slim's Saturday, February 27 with The Lonely Forest, Bear Hands and Tempo No Tempo as a party of San Francisco's Noise Pop Festival.
2 Comments:
Jesse and I just had a conversation (about an hour ago) about how this is what end of the year lists are all about. I certainly look forward to it all year. It narrows the vetting significantly, and makes me take a second look at things I'd dismissed earlier in the year.
We Were Promised Jetpacks was one of my recent revelations as well....thanks to some trusted end of year lists.
Indeed. It takes me about a year to wade through all the stuff the various music "authorities" recommend.
In a way, 2009 will live on into 2011.
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