Joy

>JETSON
+ SEVEN DAY DREAM
LEICESTER, SUMO - 07.05.04

After an incident involving an over confident, pedantic door woman I was consoled by the fact I wasn’t the only person in attendance 10 minutes after the doors opened. In fact there was a large number of people there even before the first band, Seven Day Dream, had taken the stage. This could have been something the majority of the audience would probably live to regret. Seven Day Dream appear looking like a cleaner cut Strokes but as soon as they start to play this image is dashed and they seem closer to the Levellers. It was hard to pick a tune out of the noise that confronted me, obvious influences seemed to be Travis and any other boring middle of the road indie rock band you can think of. They seemed to be falsely under the impression that if you turn your amps onto full volume it

would hide the lack of tunes, this is just not true. As their set drifted by the number of people interested seem to gradually decline until all that was left was a few polite claps, which accompanied the declaration that they had

only one song left. One song too many.

They say looks can make a band. Personally I think that’s a load of shit, good songs make a band. Fortunately for me and anyone else that was listening, Jetson seem to believe the latter is more important. That’s not to say they don’t look cool. With hair cuts only previously sported by the likes of the Cooper Temple Clause, who seem an obvious influence, they pull off the leather jackets and customised charity shop look with great effect. Opening with ‘Club Suicide’, a B side from their current single ‘Social Hand Grenades’ and in my personal opinion their strongest song, they proceed to prove their sound matches their image. Following the opener is ‘Social Hand Grenade’ which slightly worried me as the phrase

'cum too soon’ springs to mind since they’ve now played both the songs that I’ve heard. This train of thought is shown to be particularly unjust as the set progresses. The continuing energetic display, which was personified by the sweat covered brow of lead singer and guitarist Ali Allerdyce, appeared to win over a large number of the

audience who most likely had never heard of them before. Jetson never actually managed to break out of the new rock n roll, fast guitars and heavy bass mould, but what’s the point if you’ve perfected it? Not all points are awarded for originality and variation some go for fucking good music and for this Jetson score very highly.

Review by Barry Bennett

To see the video for Jestson's 'Social Handgrenade' click here

Visit www.socialhandgrenades.com or www.jetsoneer.co.uk for more information on Jetson