Every once in a while you get into a band quite late into their career, get really into them, buy their discography, get excited about seeing them live and then at that point you discover the band is no more. In the case of Derry’s Jetplane Landing, it was partly my own fault; I was young and I wasn’t allowed to go into the big scary city of London on my own to gigs, and when I left to uni and started going everywhere and watching every band, Jetplane Landing had seemingly stopped gigging, despite Backlash Cop having come out around the same time. I was unsure whether they had split, or whether other commitments had just put the band on hold, but whatever happened it’s hard to explain how good it felt when I saw people talking about a new album on Twitter and, even better, a few live shows.
A band who were one of the big players in a scene which included bands like Hundred Reasons, Million Dead, Reuben and the now huge Biffy Clyro the band showed quite a bit of variation in style, from the softer rock of ’This Is Not Revolution Rock’ through to the more aggressive sounding tracks like ’Calculate The Risk’, to 2007’s funky sounding album Backlash Cop. Don’t try is certainly a welcome return then and it’s apparent from the get go that it’s a more rocking album, in my opinion closer to the sound of Once Like A Spark.
Going in fast and hard with ‘Cheapskate Tricks For Worn Down People’ the band yelling right from a few seconds in with raw sounding guitars and powerful drumming, the change around 2:40 in actually made me stop what I was doing to appreciate it the first time I heard it. ‘Beat Generation…Ha!’ is fast paced and with some great lines to yell back at gigs (”hey, maggots, get off my turf, I wrote shit like this fucking years ago”). After the brilliantly catchy chorus of ‘My Radio Heart’, ‘Walls Of Derry’ hits hard with its big, fast, heavy intro riff and growled vocal lines during the chorus. It’s definitely a track for moving around to at live shows, especially with its breakdown and subsequent guitar solo half way through.
Starting with just the vocal cry of “I have been broken by people, not by objects but by humans”, ‘Broken By People’ is most one of the best tracks off of Don’t Try, with it’s incredibly catchy guitar parts and a bridge that was almost written for singing back, the track is just incredibly fun. ‘The Trees Fill With Screaming Birds’ is another song that really has to be listened to the whole way through, with its verses of just drums and the bass, the keys after the second chorus push the track up to another level, leading into one of the most moving parts of the album, and another short guitar solo.
With Don’t Try, Jetplane Landing have shown that despite six years off, they’ve definitely not lost the ability to write a fantastic album of post-hardcore tracks. I brought the album when the pre-order started so have been listening to it for around a month now and can safely say it doesn’t get boring with time. I’d go as far as to say tracks like ‘Broken By People’, ‘Cheapskate Tricks For Worn Down People’ and ‘Walls Of Derry’ are some of the best tracks the band have written in their lengthy career. What’s even more exciting is the fact they’re doing a full tour with the album, playing in Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham, London, Cardiff, Dublin, Derry and Belfast. A tonne of great new tracks to play live, I just hope they play a few tracks off of each album.
Don’t Try is officially released September 2nd, however if you pre-order the CD or vinyl over at Independent Music you’ll get a digital copy of the album emailed to you straight away, so you can start enjoying it early.
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