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I’ve read a few comments about how great the name of this band is which I just don’t get. The name doesn’t fit their sound, nor does it appeal as a classic moniker for a group. Thankfully that doesn’t detract from the quality of the music, a bold and confident indie rock record that has a certain romanticism with the strong Scottish accent of singer Adam Thompson.

Thompson’s voice is one of the keys here. It doesn’t fall into the fey and limp cooing of people like Death Cab For Cutie or the sub-Coldplay imitators. Instead it soars and has a sense of defiance and hope about it. Ironically when he sings on “Just a comeback, another comeback’ on Conductor he sounds like that miserablist Scot – Malcolm Middleton – though the music saves him with its Sigur Ros rise and drive.

Between them, the two producers Ken Thomas and Peter Katis have worked with Cocetau Twins, Queen, Bowie, Interpol and The National and you can hear that in the crisp sound they have brought to These Four Walls. The clarity is astounding and refreshing in this time of lo-fi acts like Vivian Girls and Wavves gaining attention.

…Jetpacks nicely mix up experimental leanings on A Half Built House with its shortwave radio samples (a la Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and then they can switch gears and channel Interpol and The National on a song like Quiet Little Voices with its raging guitars and chopping rhythms.

Yes they wear their influences on their tartan sleeves but they do it well, without a whiff of manufactured chart aspiring fabrication. …Jetpacks have trimmed all the fat from their sound and have delivered a taut and lively first album that at this stage of the year rivals Girls, Leader Cheetah and Japandroids for the most impressive debut of 09.

These Four Walls is out now on Pod/Inertia.

http://www.myspace.com/wewerepromisedjetpacks