JETPLANE LANDING is back in action with new album “Don’t Try”. The hipsters won’t like it but in Mad Max territory they like their bands not to be afraid of rocking out. Between Refused and Les Savy Fav is a destination carved out over three previous albums which spells HONESTLY, WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
PROLOGUE
Writing about the Derry based band JETPLANE LANDING is difficult for me because as the lyric goes to their song What The Argument Has Changed, “One… I love you too much”. So much for objectivity.
I know of singer-guitarist Andrew Ferris since his days in Cuckoo, a spiky indie band who released one record on Geffen in 1998. I briefly ran a fansite for that band while at Dundee Uni and later, when Jetplane Landing came along, I promoted two of their Dundee shows around the time of their debut album when they were still a three piece.
The night they played a crammed-to-the-rafters gig at the old, now demolished, Westport Bar alongside Senator and Laeto is for me, one of the happiest nights I’ve ever had promoting shows and helping bands out in general. There are framed JPL live photos in my living room that I bought from a photographer because that’s how much that whole first album and consequent tours meant to me.
If there’s one thing bands don’t like when promoting a new record, it’s when biased music reviewers bang on about the good old days. Ha!
The most recent Future of the Left album review on Pitchfork, for The Plot Against Common Sense, was an example of a critic so blinded by the past that he failed to accurately discuss the new record in question. In fact, he made such a terrible job of it that FoTL’s Andy Falkous felt compelled to set him straight on a few points with a level of self-awareness that very few musicians possess. It’s a must-read for anyone in a band, anyone who reviews music, and anyone who likes laughing.
As the cheesy line in the detective show goes, you’re too damn close to this case to think clearly!
But fuck it, write a piece on the return of Jetplane Landing I shall.
BETWEEN A ROCK AND AN ART PLACE
As a three piece JPL’s word of mouth likened them to Pavement, Dinosaur Jr, with nods to U.S. indie-emo bands like Burning Airlines. Debut album Zero For Conduct was art-rock with a certain lo-fi charm and quickly gathered critical acclaim.
So why is it that certain music fans stopped caring about the band from the second record onwards?
From that second album onwards Once Like A Spark, they were a four piece with a second guitarist, Cahir, who also jams in Fighting With Wire. Their collective ideas for the music they wanted to create became less art-pop and more wall of guitars, post-hardcore sounding. For some that’s an instant turn off.
Art-pop or Art-rock/noise is a description you can use for bands like Mogwai, Wild Flag, or Mars Volta. Y’know, the kind of bands that would not look out of place on an All Tomorrow’s Parties type of bill.
Listen to Mogwai’s menacing and brutal track Batcat for an example of the difference between it and say, a melodic post-hardcore band such as Strike Anywhere. As much as the latter track is a quality tune, Batcat fucking destroys it in the last thirty seconds. Intense, brutal yet served stylishly like a fine wine. The Hannibal Lecter approach to noise.
Jetplane Landing’s progression to melodic post-hardcore confused some but it makes perfect sense if you’re familiar at all with the Northern Irish rock scene.
Kicking doors down is in the air, whether it’s early Ash, Therapy? or Fighting With Wire. Northern Ireland doesn’t do twee in the way that Scotland does twee. There isn’t the same emphasis or pretentiousness around art and music that exists in Glasgow.
That Fighting With Wire signed to Atlantic Records and not a Domino, Matador, or Fat Cat gives you an idea how much N.I. bands like to RAWK. How much you think that’s a positive or negative depends on your own taste in music.
You could argue the problem is perception and interpretation.
Evolution to the Refused European Hardcore Template™ can sound like something else to UK pop writers. NME likened the second record to nu-metal. As failing to understand intent goes, it’s up there with the Pitchfork critic thinking The Plot Against Common sense had corporate-slick production. Clearly, it’s bollocks.
Whatever it was, the lo-fi charm was gone. You couldn’t imagine it at All Tomorrow’s Parties. The hipsters walked away.
The more I listened to Once Like A Spark, the more I would often find myself singing the line “I must reconcile your absence“.
GET THE FUNK OUTTA HERE
Around the time of their third album Backlash Cop, the band said they wanted to move away from making a record that could be said to sound like Biffy Clyro. With the bands of that alt-rock ilk all dropping like flies (Million Dead, Hundred Reason, Reuben etc) it made sense. Plenty of highly influential music released through U.S. labels in the 90s and 00s like DeSoto and Dischord promotes jazz-rock and funk rhythms. Bands such as Les Savy Fav and Q and Not U have recorded several brilliant albums. JPL even wrote a song for the album called ‘why do they never play Les Savy Fav on the radio?‘
The best I can say about JPL’s third album attempt is that it fell short. Great idea, not a fan of the execution.
I’ve listened to Q and Not U’s debut album ‘No Kill No Beep Beep’ so often that I’m probably overly critical when I hear bands such as Hot Hot Heat copy that style and make it more pop. JPL didn’t make that similar approach more pop but they didn’t make it truly their own voice either. There are fans who love the record. I’m not one of them but not because I’d have preferred generic alt-rock by numbers. I’d rather listen to James Brown!
And so the long wait for another album began.
TO SUFFER FOR ART IS THE DULLEST PART
If you’re still reading, congrats. As I often say, I’m not writing any of this for negative attention. I love the band and was chuffed to hear there was a fourth album, Don’t Try, coming out. All of this is my honest take on following the band over the years.
In an era of indie record shops closing, kids not buying records, and Spotify continuing to be a double edged sword I figure there’s no harm writing a piece on JPL.
Everyone has an opinion. It’s when you shove yours down people’s throats as absolute fact that you have to ask yourself where that need to do so comes from.
To a long-term fan, Don’t Try sounds like a lot of things finally clicking together.
Instead of having to defend itself from accusations of plagiarism from primary sources (the harshest and most honest review of Hundred Reasons simply said go listen to Sunny Day Real Estate and Drive Like Jehu instead), Jetplane Landing have carved out their own thing.
Don’t Try opens with the speed and raw riffery we’d expect from Kvelertak or a famous Scandinavian hardcore band. There are a few breakdown sections which are closer in guitar sound to dirty garage rock. Not even public school hipsters writing for NME could mistake what’s going on here. If you don’t rate it, SAUNTER ON BIG MAN!
HEY MAGGOTS GET OFF MY TURF
There are a few cracking songs on Don’t Try such as Beat Generation Ha! which sounds like Motorhead with Dave Grohl on guitar. Yes, it’s that rocktacular.
For me the highlight of the album is track four MY RADIO HEART which is the point where everything about Jetplane Landing clicks. It’s a great song, one with huge potential to help them find a new audience. It makes most other big name UK bands output this year sound fucking dire by comparison.
There aren’t slow songs on this record, merely variations in melody and approach. It’s part math, part garage rock, all heavy riffs.
The hipsters won’t like it but in Northern Ireland they like their bands to not be afraid to rock out. JPL have finally gone for the jugular. And any band that could potentially share a stage with METZ or Kvelertak without embarrassing themselves deserves major kudos.
These guys must be carrying their balls around in a wheelbarrow they found up on the Derry walls. Let the siege begin.
ORDER THE NEW JETPLANE LANDING ALBUM DON’T TRY
VISIT THEIR RECORD LABEL SMALLTOWN AMERICA / FACEBOOK
2013 gig dates at present:
19th July – Eagle’s Rock, Draperstown – Glasgowbury Festival
2nd September – Sheffield – Corporation
3rd September – Glasgow – Stereo
4th September – Manchester Soup Kitchen
5th September – Nottingham Bodega
6th September – London Lexington
7th September – Cardiff – Clwb Ifor Bach
13th September – Derry – Glassworks
14th September – Belfast – Limelight
Night made. Ordered CD and 12″, currently seeing if I can grab the MP3s. Chances of them coming to Dundee?
Think this is the best of your recent bits of writing, obviously leaving aside anything about my own band. I look forward to hearing the new record, even if I started drifting away with ‘Once Like a Spark’ (though listening again now) and never got round to buying ‘Backlash Cop’.
The second time you put JPL on, as a four piece, in the old Westie was my sister’s first gig – 14 at the time. Still have my signed copy of ‘Zero for Conduct’.
I was a huge fan of Cuckoo, loved them. There’s a b-side called “Most Peculiar Way of Leaving” that was brilliant. Never knew you’d run a fansite!
There are so many great bands mentioned in this post; JPL, LSF, FotL, HR, Reuben… oh man I loved it.