Singles

We Were Promised Jetpacks - Roll Up Your Sleeves

Tim Miller 22/06/2009

Rating: 2.5/5

If epicentres of music tend to roll around between cities, even countries, Scotland's time must be coming to a head. Critical acclaim has gone to Glasvegas and Frightened Rabbit recently; Biffy Clyro, The Fratellis and Franz Ferdinand are now major international bands. It continues to inspire a ream of young bands into making new music, and the country is continuing to produce a crop of exciting new names - of which We Were Promised Jetpacks are touted to be one of the better.

Complementing debut album These Four Walls, released last week on June 15th, Roll Up Your Sleeves is a scatty single, crisp guitar chords shredded over a quick but stumbling beat. Adam Thompson's youthful Scottish burr is urgent too, but the song mellows lazily into a dreamy outro, in warm contrast to the previous two and a half minutes. B-side Back to the Bare Bones is much the same, in truth; more pronounced is that Glaswegian tone, this time a barely restrained yelp throughout much of the track, while the drums clamour with more authority, crashing out the time to keep in check the rousing vocal.

What it has in atmosphere and energy though, it lacks in decent tunes. That frenetic guitar sound is in Maccabees territory, and only the difference in lyrics distinguishes between the two choruses. To be fair, it perches quite neatly atop and shouts from a rise of increasingly agitated guitars and bristling rhythms; it just might be that the medium is more worthy than the message. It represents, nevertheless, one of the many facets of Scottish music right now, but its lack of cutting edge may be a warning sign that not all of that promise will be delivered on.


Release date: 22nd June 2009