By Grant Schrantz, Staff Writer
I recently found myself listening to Scotland based indie rock band, We Were Promised Jetpacks’ new album In the Pit of the Stomach, released last month and honestly didn’t think too much of it.
The members of the band are as follows: Adam Thompson on vocals and guitar, Michael Palmer on guitar, Sean Smith on bass, and Darren Lackie on drums. The group first formed in 2003 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and shortly after went on to win their school’s battle of the band contest. After a few years the group relocated to Glasglow where they truly started to climb up the local hierarchy of bands. According to an interview from thelineofbestfit.com, when they were asked when they first decided they wanted to be musicians they said “There was a time when we first moved to Glasgow (we grew up and went to school in Edinburgh, then three of us moved to Glasgow and one of us to Stirling) and started playing proper gigs in proper venues. Playing in Edinburgh before was weird as we were underage, so ended up playing some odd nights. Which was cool, but when we moved to Glasgow we were of drinking age and we started playing places like Sleazy’s and whatnot. We felt like a proper band, so from about then, probably.” They went on to release the albums These Four Walls and In the Pit of the Stomach respectively in June of 2009 and October 2011.
This album was okay, but not anything special. The songs all sounded too similar for my liking, and the band sounds more like any mainstream alternative rock band that you’d hear on the radio. There are a few exceptions however, I liked their single ‘Medicine’ for its high energy, as well as ‘Sore Thumb’ for its harmonics. For those reasons, I would give the album an overall rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.
