Analysts Adumbrating Anfractuosity,

After noticing The Pit of the Stomach by We Were PromisedJetpacks was nominated as one of the twenty best Scottish albums of the last year, I had high expectations for their concert at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen. The week before the concert, I bought it in Fopp for £5, I listened to it and I thought it was okay. I wasn’t moved greatly by it and I wished that I had bought a ticket for Admiral Fallow the evening before. Upheaval elsewhere meant that I couldn’t easily attend that concert so I was left with We Were Promised Jetpacks.

The problem was three-pronged. It was too late, my days have been demanding of late and 2215 hrs may as well have been the year 2215 because that’s what the start time felt like. I was distracted; I could not give them the attention they might have received on another day. The most important issue was the relative quality of The Pit of the Stomach versus These Four Walls.

The Pit of the Stomach is one-paced. When nearly every song is at constructed in the same manner (and usually brash and bold), personality is lost. Of the whole album, I can recall one lyric, ‘it’s hard to remember a colder November’. Hard to remember is a hard-hitting gritty song that puts me in mind of The Twilight Sad, its emotions are real and reflective of human struggle but the extended and drawled headline is painfully out of tune. Act onImpulse actually seems like a quiet version of Medicine.  On listening to the songs individually, I feel that my critique is harsh because, in isolation, they are all admirable. In a live setting, the band do not stop for meaningless chitchat, the charge through the set list - this doesn’t endear them to me.

What The Pit of the Stomach lacks is the punch of previous singles Quiet Little Voices and Roll Up Your Sleeves. Ironic, it was that, at the height of summer, ‘Roll up your sleeves for winter’ was best received.

In much the same way as people will cite Maps as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs best song despite the fact that it is not wholly representative of their catalogue, I most enjoyed Sore Thumb on the evening. The song is mostly instrumental and not dissimilar to Mogwai in its broodiness. On the evening, it stood out for its frailty and calm on an evening of racing thoughts and bellowing voices.