“The Last Place You’ll Look” finds We Were Promised Jetpacks taking a much more evolved form than that of their debut effort “These Four Walls”, in the sense that most of the conventional dynamics that the band employed have been ditched in favour of a darker, more brooding tone.

Of the 5 tracks on “The Last Place You’ll Look” only 3 are new, with 2 being tracks from the aforementioned debut, however we do get to witness the band revisiting them in their newly evolved form. This means seeing them in a much more intimate environment, stripping down the songs and rebuilding them with the aid of strings and the same driving force as before but with a revitalised sense of energy about them.
Short Bursts sees it’s pace and thumping drums dropped in favour of a sparse yet beautiful twinkle accompanied by sustained strings that could bring a person to their knees, whilst This is my House, This is my Home sees it taking a very similar path to the original only minus the distorted freak out towards the end.

As for the new music, only A Far Cry and With the Benefit of Hindsight offer any form of insight into what the next full length will contain as The Walls are Wear Thin serves mainly as a prelude to the latter of the two. A Far Cry would certainly be the lead track, easing the listener in via the more typical aspects of the band we’ve come to expect but also hinting at the changes to follow in due course.

My only worry for the future is that despite their progression as a band that’s shown here, they now evoke stronger comparisons to their fellow Scots Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad with this sound. I found “These Four Walls” to be a breath of fresh air with this current run of bands and that it offered something that these two bands didn’t, hopefully WWPJ can still retain their identity whilst constantly moving forward on the next record.

The record is currently being streamed via Fat Cat Records if you fancy a listen!