Album review: We Were Promised Jetpacks

The youngest of the bastard sons of Mogwai and Arab Strap, schooled in Edinburgh and matured in Glasgow, this quartet are all younger than Andy Murray. Friends of Frightened Rabbit and admirers of Twilight Sad, it is no surprise both these elder musical siblings' influence can be clearly and distortedly heard. But We Were Promised Jetpacks have exuberance all of their own, leaping out from the pounding pop drums driving Short Bursts, or the warped groove of the opening It's Thunder And It's Lightning.

That song's thrillingly chaotic climax dissolves into the in-your-face intro of Ships With Holes Will Sink, with vocalist Adam Thomson snarling like a man possessed.

The more reflective Roll Up Your Sleeves shows that is not his default mode, crooning "Stay calm" over pastoral guitar motifs. Conductor is a beautifully constructed wash of sound, flexing controlled musical muscle, matching the scary story of A Half Built House and the trepidation shuddering through This Is My House, This Is My Home: "Something's happened in the attic, we both know I'm not going up there."

Turns out it is a young rock band with their heads-down-no-nonsense-boogie making a sublime racket. It all ends not with a bang but An Almighty Thud, an acoustic slab of melancholy offset by the electric fuzz bleeding through from the periphery.

Download: Conductor, Short Bursts

Album review: We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls