After the A.U. show we wandered to the stage out back, where the bands that had already made a name for themselves played. We knew We Were Promised Jetpacks were going to be playing, and we hoped their roughly melodic, noisy brand of rock would salve our wounds of disappointment—and all other wounds we happened to have. We were right.
WWPJ were the first band I’ve ever seen that I recognized right as they walked on stage. I knew the lead singer’s Scottish babyface from the Quiet Little Voices music video I had watched again and again (and again). The rush was ridiculously incredible. We had stood for at least 45 minutes, bored and sober kids in a crowd of tipsy adults, all of whom seemed far more capable of having fun anywhere than we were. So when the band finally showed up, fish-belly pale next to the tattooed and tanned sound crew, I stood, riveted, for the next half hour as the fiddled with their instruments and milled around stage, drinking water from cartons.
The minute they began actually playing music, the difference between the tiny stage inside and that outside was immediately obvious. And, with each song, I grew to love a band I once new only one song from.
The band was, at the time, on a tour to promote their newest album, In The Pit of the Stomach, which meant they never played Quiet Little Voices, the song we were hoping to scream along to. But their sound and their energy blew most of our worries away, even if just for a bit. The show went from the guitar screams and pounding beats of Medicine to the quiet, lovelorn wailing of Pear Tree, and each song was accompanied by the appropriate wave of emotion. When I went back to the hotel that night, all I wanted to listen to was more of their songs. Since then I’ve realized how listenable, how therapeutic, how downrightgoodtheir dark, brooding, melodic but slightly repetative music can be.
For fans of Frightened Rabbit and Arcade Fire. I recommend Circles and Squares, It’s Thunder and It’s Lightning, and Roll Up Your Sleeves, my current favorite. Give their full albums a listen. Then give ‘em another—they might just grow on you.
