Three years after their critically acclaimed debut, These Four Walls, Edinburgh indie-rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks return with a record that lives up to the second album ideals of maturity and confidence while losing none of the energy and fervour that made their first album so enjoyable. In the Pit of the Stomach was recorded at Sundlaugin Studios in Iceland with live sound engineer Andrew Bush, while additional production and mixing duties were taken care of by Pater Katis who has previously worked with label mates Frightened Rabbit. They also took their time recording the tracks this time round, as guitarist and vocalist Adam Thompson notes: “We recorded the debut album in eight days with one short tour under our belts – this time around we spent a full three weeks in the studio [...] and made an album that both captures the sound of our live show and is strong start to finish.”
Circles and Squares certainly starts things off strongly. In an instant the band sound bigger, brasher, bolder and other hyperbolic words starting with ‘b’. Seriously though, this is an absolutely thundering album opener that manages to be grandiose and pack a serious punch. Medicine is the first single to be taken from the album and although it’s probably one of the tracks that is able to stand by itself it still works better as part of the whole. This is something I think applies to the whole album. Where These Four Walls was a cracking album, it still felt like a collection of good songs strung together that could be taken by themselves more readily than a whole. In the Pit of the Stomach is an album proper. The songs segue into each other perfectly and there’s no loss of momentum whatsoever. This sense of unity even works when they switch gear throughout Through the Dirt and the Gravel which goes from a dark, anthemic post-punk sound to a positively upbeat wee rocker, since lyrically it’s about ‘picking up the pieces’ and ‘going back to the drawing board’.
You might have heard Act on Impulse already, since it has been given away by the band as a free mp3 to help promote the new album. It’s the first track on the album that remotely resembles a ‘slow’ song and it still blazes along at a fast pace. Sore Thumb, however, is the stand-out slow-burner of the album. It shows off the more ambient, post-rock sound that you can hear seeping into WWPJ’s sound throughout the album as it builds towards an absolutely stunning climax that really encapsulates how much of a leap in quality the band have taken. Boy in the Backseat is a frenetic, epic track which makes me want to leap around my room with my Guitar Hero controller pretending to be a rock star and the next track, arguably the strongest on the whole album, doesn’t do much to sway me away from this activity. The album closes with my personal favourite, Pear Tree which manages to outdo the rest of the album to finish on the highest of high notes. It’s just an absolutely stunning track, from the distant vocals to the piano refrain to the break in the middle to the absolutely AMAZEBALLS ending. Those thumping drums, that increasing sense of urgency conveyed by the guitars and then the crashing cymbals! I just love it.
It’s the perfect way to cap an album that is not only strong from start to finish, but manages to get progressively stronger track by track. We Were Promised Jetpacks have delivered, and how.
In the Pit of the Stomach is released on October 3rd by Fatcat Records.
LD
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