The Bowery Presents

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We Were Promised Jetpacks
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Following closely in the footsteps of The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks are yet another hugely talented young scottish band added to the FatCat roster. The 4-piece came to our attention when listening to some of the friends on the Frightened Rabbit Myspace page. Though recent months has seen the band tour the UK with their aforementioned friends, the four preceding years have consisted of local gigs in and around Glasgow and Edinburgh, allowing WWPJ to find their sound and hone their live performance.

Assembled in Edinburgh as high school friends in 2003, their first ever gig saw them winning their school's battle of the bands competition. Proceeding shows were after school performances around the city of Edinburgh which were well attended and fuelled the band with a hunger and ambition. If the nascent WWPJ aural template embraced light-footed compositions – few effects pedals, traditional song structures, clear-cut guitars - succeeding years have seen WWPJ soar aural heights and mine emotional depths in every sense: the band you will encounter now are a cacophonous tour de force: louder, wilder, avidly literate; fiercely melodic, yet eagerly restrained. Lyrics and vocal melodies come courtesy of Adam Thompson, everything else arises from the full group; Adam Thompson (Guitar/Vocals), Michael Palmer (Guitar), Sean Smith (Bass) and Darren Lackie (Drums).

Before even releasing a single, WWPJ have laid claim to some recent successes which bode well for the future of the band. A well recorded three-track demo was circulated and managed to pick up a KEXP track of the day over the pond, and plays on national stations in the UK were popping up on XFM, BBC and Q radio. Before the announcement of WWPJ signing to FatCat Records, a strong hint was sitting on the shelves across the UK in the form of inclusion on a recent FatCat sampler, mounted onto Plan B magazine.

A tour through September 2008 as main support for Frightened Rabbit garnered some great reviews for WWPJ. This being their first jaunt into England, healthy crowds arrived early on each evening due to the huge buzz in Scotland now filtering down south of the border. You could loosely pin some reference points onto WWPJ; the vocals reminiscent of Morrisy or Paul Banks (Interpol), clever guitar interplay similar to something you’d hear on a Billy Mahonie track, dynamically you could compare them to Mogwai, and generally Futureheads/Hot Club De Paris/Postcard/Fire Engine are all good markers.

With an album scheduled for May 2009, and singles around this, the forthcoming year of releases and touring is set to be a busy one for We Were Promised Jetpacks.
Jimmy Eat World
official website
myspace
The public has two different perceptions of Jimmy Eat World. One is the band known for the classic pop single “The Middle” -- the ubiquitous summer smash hit of 2002 and that propelled the 2001 album “Jimmy Eat World” (originally titled “Bleed American”) to multi-platinum status, as years of slogging it out under the radar were finally rewarded with sold out tours, an appearance on Saturday Night Live, an MTV Video Award nomination, invitations to tour with Green Day, Weezer and Blink-182, and critical acclaim on year-end lists from Spin, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Blender and Alternative Press among others.
The other is a band who made it the hard way and continues to do so: paying their dues, toiling for years outside the mainstream, releasing records on indie labels, building a dedicated fan base through incessant touring and by crafting albums like 1996’s formative “Static Prevails,” 1999’s “Clarity,” a pioneering record that resonated immediately with young listeners who wanted (read: needed) a little substance with their rock and roll, and 2004's "Futures," which featured the irresistible singles "Pain" and "Work" and marked the band's second taste of gold sales and year-end best lists.

The pressure of successfully reconciling two such disparate images, making music that appeals to both constituents, has made lesser bands implode. Jimmy Eat World however has risen to the challenge, and for its new album “Chase This Light” the band regrouped in its native Arizona, built a home studio and methodically crafted the most emotionally and sonically expansive record of its 13-year career.

“Our goal,” says singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Jim Adkins, “has always been to get songs to a place that is accessible without being insulting.”

Straight away, from the opening riff of the first track and single “Big Casino,” the listener can tell this is a record that exudes confidence. Bold, crunchy modern rock riffs sit alongside clear vocals with direct first-person lyrics. It’s a skillful and fearless band that can successfully combine soaring guitar solos and textured feedback with call-and-response vocals, sing-a-long choruses and hand claps. The result is an album that seamlessly combines deep, heartfelt expression with the razor sharp hooks that have always been the band’s stock in trade.

Taken together, the eleven songs on this record form Jimmy Eat World’s most stylistically varied, musically ambitious and lyrically bravest effort. Highlights include the irresistible anthem “Electable (Give It Up),” “Carry You” (cited as a highlight of their recent warm-up tour), sure to be future live staples “Let It Happen” and “Always Be” and the haunting ballad—and perhaps most striking song on the album, “Gotta Be Somebody Blues,” described by Adkins as “the creepiest thing we have ever done.” The result is the proudest moment of the Jimmy Eat World catalog.

“It feels great,” Adkins concludes. “We have the album and we have the studio we made it with. Whatever happens in the future, we will always be able to make records on our own without compromise.”
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