★★★★★
Live albums are tricky. Usually there's some sort of gimmick that acts as a hook, whether it's a legendary venue or the band has decided to do a stripped down set (see Band of Horses' solid Acoustic at the Ryman). E Rey (Live In Philadelphia) doesn't try either approach. Performed at a relatively new venue, the Union Transfer, We Were Promised Jetpacks instead just lets it all out on stage on a relatively straight forward and thankfully excellent set...
- www.popmatters.com
2014-03-03
★★★★★
The Water Of Leith is running blue with fresh Scottish blood, ready to nourish the flourishing music scene in Edinburgh. Not literally, I should point out. Although the Scottish capital has a thriving arts scene, it has long been known as the country's second musical city after Glasgow, but this is all set to change with the surfacing of a number of noticeably excellent bands like Come On Gang...
- www.thecmuwebsite.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Maybe I'm weak on UK accent localization, but lead singer Adam Thompson reminds me of Jake Burns from Stiff Little Fingers. Yeah, he's one island over, but still. The boys of We Were Promised Jet Packs play a noisy, jittery indie pop that starts by making you shout "turn that noise down!" but grows with repeated looping.Their melodies are complex and obscure like a microtonal polyphony while Thompson's vocals are somehow isolated from his bandmates' endeavors...
- www.ink19.com
2011-12-05
★★★★★
We Were Promised Jetpacks has the sort of name your meathead freshman-year roommate would suggest for a band: ambiguously ironic, nominally funny, appealing to a sort of lowest common-denominator pop-punk crowd. Actually, most of the Scottish acts with which the young group is affiliated have the types of names that make me embarrassed to mention them in discussion (Frightened Rabbit, The Twilight Sad)...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-11-17
★★★★★
Scottish rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks waste no time in launching head-on into their second LP, In the Pit of the Stomach. Opener "Circles And Squares" brings forward rolling drums and shows just what the band can do with the highs and lows in their music. ??However the second track and single, "Medicine", doesn't quite seem to pick up enough, and for all the frenetic drumming, it almost feels a little lacklustre - an unfortunately recurring feeling, at least throughout earlier tracks...
- www.theaureview.com
2011-11-14
★★★★★
Following in the footsteps of countrymen the Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit, the curiously named We Were Promised Jetpacks carved their path with a similar brand of sweeping, catharsis-hungry rock. Their 2009 debut, These Four Walls, combined an emotional pull with a penchant for distortion, flying by at a turbulent pace. Back with album number two, WWJ have widened their scope to allow a little more room to breathe...
- exclaim.ca
2011-10-27
★★★★★
While 2009"s debut "These Four Walls" was a brilliant attempt at thoughtful-yet-turbulent rock, it was too restrained for the tracks to be the fist-pumpers they could have been, probably a result of the Edinburgh group"s rushed recording process. This time around, however, they"ve paced themselves and delivered an album packed with punchy, literate guitar music. Most surprising of all is the gargantuan "Hard To Remember", which ups the noise to Mogwai levels (ie very fucking loud)...
- www.nme.com
2011-10-24
★★★★★
These Four Walls proved an eclectic 2009 debut by We Were Promised Jetpacks, with "It's Thunder and Lightning" and "Quiet Little Voices" establishing themselves as perpetual hits on the indie scene. This indie circuit usually warms to underdogs and their solid debut encouraged fans to yearn for another release from the Scottish giants...
- www.punknews.org
2011-10-20
★★★★★
Edinburgh, Scotland post-punk quartet We Were Promised Jetpacks were unfairly saddled with the "Scottish emo" label a few times in reviews for their OK, but sonically scatter-shot 2009 debut, These Four Walls. On the emergent group's accomplished sophomore effort, In the Pit of the Stomach, they dash that flimsy label to bits. And boy, do they come out swinging.Opening track, "Circles and Squares," is a damn near patented WWPJ glass-raiser...
- www.prefixmag.com
2011-10-17
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