Yesterday, KEXP graciously let me to pretend to be a VIP and attend a private performance by We Were Promised Jetpacks, at the Triple Door downtown. You can tune in to the results today at 11 a.m., or try their concert tonight at Neumo’s.
Of all the donor benefits I know, KEXP’s VIP Club Concerts seem like the most aimed at giving the people what they want: more music, surrounded by people who also love music. And by “love,” I mean willing to pony up a gift of $500-999 for invites to four club concerts, or $1,000 or more for eight. The plus side is those prices cut down on drunks who arrive late for the show, and talk throughout it.
The afternoon concert feels like a mid-day music holiday. I don’t know how people arrange it with work–sudden dental emergencies?–but the Triple Door fills up with an appreciative crowd, most of whom arrive early to take in the eats and drinks in the Musicquarium.
We Were Promised Jetpacks are a group of boys from Edinburgh via Glasgow, and not Germany, as Adam Thompson told the guy who asked where they were from. Despite protesting that the hour (2 p.m.) was way too early for a gig, they channeled their frustration at not receiving jetpacks by now into some loud, loud indie rock.
They’re touring for their second album, In the Pit of the Stomach, which Pitchfork says casts them as “meticulous and muscular post-punk militants,” because, you know, you’ve got to say something, and it might as well be vaguely derogatory. Venerable oldster Rolling Stone is more on the money with the thought that it’s “as if the Texas band Explosions in the Sky had shown up with New Order’s singer and backfield.”
Damn sad I missed it. Love the new album.