Neumos was louder than usual this past Tuesday night, and if you’ve been there before, you know that’s really saying something. The source of the loud was We Were Promised Jetpacks, from Edinburgh, Scotland, who were in town and playing to a packed house.
WWPJ are a group of five guys (three of whom play guitar, one on bass and one on drums) who throw themselves fully into the music they’re playing on stage. Adam Thompson, the lead vocalist and lead guitarist — the backbone of the entire operation — sings in the deeper registers and can seemingly hit 100 decibels all on his own. Throw on top of that the guitars and drums and you can literally feel the sound doing a number on your insides.
The band has released two studio albums to date — 2009’s These Four Walls, which won me over to the band a few years ago, and 2011’s In the Pit of the Stomach. Throughout the 1.5 hour set, the band played a good mix from both albums, as well as a smattering of songs from a new, as-yet-unreleased album that the band said was slated for release in September or October of this year.
The crowd at the nearly sold-out show leaned a tad towards the older side, but I find myself lacking in reasons for why that would be. I did hear a few accents in the crowd — maybe the Sottish contingency in Seattle is older and I just never knew it. Either way, they all sang along with Thompson, attempting to meet his loudness whenever possible. The amount of in-unison head banging and body rocking throughout the set felt as if the crowd had practiced a choreographed dance prior to the band taking the stage (they hadn’t).
Even the new, unknown songs brought excitement and adulation, but also a tad bit of confusion. With their new stuff, the band is clearly trying to break out of the somewhat formulaic mold they’ve built for themselves over the past two albums. Gone are the huge crescendos, the extreme quiets and the deafening louds, opting instead for changes in tempo, key and instrumentation — the types of changes the music geek in me wants to applaud. But they sounded almost like two different bands from the earlier work. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — many bands have changed their tune mid-career and have been better for it — but when you’re so good at one particular sound, your fans may not understand when you want to push away from it.
The crowd stuck with it, however, and were well-rewarded for enjoying the new stuff when the band would circle back to the fan favorites. “Sore Thumb,” from In the Pit of the Stomach, with its 2+ minute intro, saw Thompson standing 3 feet back from the mic and singing/shouting to reproduce the hollow sound found on the recorded version. When the song breaks into the heavy part, the audience got immediately back to the head banging and jumping around.
I was surprised and delighted to see that no mosh pit broke out. This must be attributable to the overall age of the of the crowd. “It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning,” the first song from their debut album, was another fan favorite. To this day, five years past, any time I hear this song I have to stop what I’m doing and dedicate myself to throwing my body around when the bridge comes crashing in. The live set was no different, but we all somehow managed to stay in our own designated space, giddily smiling and enjoying the song with everyone without the need to tear down your fellow man.
We Were Promised Jetpacks is at the beginning of their nationwide tour, ending in Austin for SXSW. Do yourself a favor and see them live. It’s a cathartic experience that everyone should enjoy at least once in their life.
