Despite all the gaps that exist between generational styles, every once in a while, a retro styled band comes along that takes the past edges of rock and merges them into a style that is easily palatable for today’s younger audience. Jet is that kind of band. What results is that the band draws in older listeners while younger listeners get their caffeine filled music. But not only that, the younger audiences become immersed in an older style thus drawing them into the past. Everyone wins.
Jet takes cues from a lot of bands, AC/DC and Black Crowes among them. Once young musicians witness the obvious successes of bands like Strokes and Kings of Leon, who themselves have borrowed liberally from the past, injecting smarts and talents into a successful blend of multi-generational rock that we can all sink our teeth into, it’s just a matter of time before we see a lot more.
On Jet’s debut Elektra release, Get Born, are 13 songs that flirt with the past borrowing not only sounds but looks as well. Their recent appearance on Saturday Night Live show a band that looks and feels (I borrowed that phrase…see, it’s not an indictment, it’s respect) like they stepped from the early 80s. With sound infusion of late 70s and early 80s that lived by the stripped down and fast kick of rock, Jet delivers a great collection of rock that would have been quite popular back in the day.
But there is an element of this band that sits quite well, well enough for the 40 something listener who have all but shunned the vagaries of rock as it plods along with no substantial lasting values other than a timeline. One listen to “Rollover D.J.” and you will be somewhat stunned to hear an organ (yep, thought that one was gone) played by Billy Preston. And he makes another appearance elsewhere.
There are plenty of songs here that will be a pleasant blast for fans. What I think is fantastic about a band like Jet is that it brings back into the forum of music a realization that music requires a hybrid element to be memorable and to provide the lasting qualities of content. Jet would have been a monster in the late 70s/early 80s. This album has several singles, each waiting to make the leap into radio. The problem? What radio will play it? With radio as it is, it is difficult to push a band like this. They’ll be noticed, no doubt. But it will be tough to maintain.
And so I take this time to alert all children of the 70s and 80s that Jet is a band out of time; one to be appreciated and enjoyed. Jet makes the jump into the resurgent tide pools of retro-rock following the dive of The Strokes, The Music, Kings of Leon, and Darkness. With Get Born, you’ll get a perfect blend of music that will take you back to a time where diversity of music, even on a single release, allowed a band to breathe and gave us many reasons to fall in love with a band. Jet was born many years too late to fully be what they could have been. But let’s not make a mistake and write them off because they are “too young” or “not with it”. These guys rock. They work.
The older audiences need to support this resurgence if only to redirect qualities of the past back into modern music thus revitalizing a stagnating industry. Younger audiences need to jump onto the wagon of the “new wave” of retro rock and claim for yourselves some the legitimacy that you enjoy when you listen to Dad’s stock. You’ve started with The Strokes, The Music, and other before mentioned bands. Now go forward and make us proud. You know you want to. This one comes highly recommended.
