Jet Get Born

They drink, they smoke, they fight, they fuck and they swear. In every single possible way, Jet are trying their hardest to be Rock Stars; the last gang in town, leaving a trail of blood and broken hearts in their wake. On paper, this must make Jet one of the most exciting bands around at the moment. But they're not. Well, not with an album as decidedly average as Get Born.

Ok, I'll admit it, when I first put this record on, I was absolutely blown away. The first three tracks are absolutely phenomenal. Last chance is a brooding, moody stomp of an opener, all blood and guts & to-hell-with-the-consequences attitude, it's a track that could definitely scare the hell out of your parents (if they hadn't grown up listening to the Rolling Stones). And with the lairy, Lust for Life-isms of the second track Are you gonna be my girl, you start to get the feeling that Jet can actually back up the macho bravado they're so fond of in interviews with the REALLY BIG tunes to match. And then you hear a song as tragically castrated as Look what you've done, a semi-comatose, meat-and-potatoes ballad that attempts to touch you in all the right places, but fails on all counts.

In this instance, Jet fail to be a great band because of what they are: great rock stars. Lets be honest here, how many of you out there would be taken in by a ballad sung my a man such as Nic Cester, someone who wouldn't give a second thought to spiriting your girlfriend away to his room at the Columbia for some serious Class-A action? Ditto for the other ballads that make up the weak backbone of this album. On Move On I keep expecting Cester to launch into the chorus with "And the Handbags and the Glad rags...". Yes, it's that mundane. It's a sad situation when you can look at the track listing of an album, and know that all of the songs on there that are longer than three minutes are going to be a disappointment. But that's exactly how I feel when I actually hold the album in my hands: a little disappointed (with the exception of the beautiful album closer Timothy). Whilst there are some really excellent tracks on Get born there are more than enough tracks that don't live up to our justifiably high expectations of a band that promise so much but don't quite deliver.

But to write a band such as Jet off after one album would be rather presumptuous of me. They have plenty of potential to be one of the most exciting bands of our times, it's just that when they try to reach beyond their rather limited repertoire of two-minute "lets get drunk and have a fight" garage thumpers, they start to make being in a band sound like, well, a real job. And that's the one thing that people don't want from their Rock 'n' Roll bands. Unless you're a fan of The Stereophonics.

They drink, they smoke, they fight, they fuck and they swear. If Jet were chemists, they'd be the most Rock 'n' Roll chemists you could possibly imagine. But they're not; they're a rock band, and one that I hope can certainly go on and produce an album that betters this effort by a long way. But hey, at least they're better than The Vines.