Jetplane Landing - 'Once Like A Spark' (Smalltown America) 27/10/03

DIY punk doesn't normally sound like the sort of thing with which a band might be looking for world domination, but let's face it, if your last band had been signed to Geffen, and your fans included Ash and Hundred Reasons, your targets would be slightly raised as well. Such is the history of London-based emo-rock trio Jetplane Landing.

After two years of self-financed frolics, we arrive at album number three. The result is probably the best record they've made so far. 'Once Like A Spark' opens with the same sort of heavily intricate riffage we've come to expect from them, and with titles like 'I Opt Out' and 'The Strength Of Our Conviction', we're definitely on familiar ground. That said, they've made the necessary progressions you would hope for, quite simply in that their songwriting has drastically improved. Whilst they're still probably an indie kid's idea of a real modern rock band, rather than the skater's punk of choice, single 'Calculate The Risk' still manages to evoke the sort of pogo-inducing guitar stomp that all the best rock should, coming across like the bastard offspring of Kerbdog and Sebadoh, after a quick shag behind the toilets of the Warped tour.

Equally, 'Conventional Thought' opens with a stream of squalling guitar feedback and pounding punk beats, before metamorphosing into one of the best songs the Foo Fighters never wrote. Of course, expecting a guitar band to create something truly new is as thankless a task as waiting for Iain Duncan Smith's radical left-wing policies - it's not beyond the bounds of possibility but it's not really going to happen. That said, Jetplane Landing have not managed to create anything less than a thoroughly derivative album, and anyone with their ears to the post-hardcore underground over the last year might struggle to see the point in all this. 'Once Like A Spark', however, is the best American-sounding guitar-pop album made by English people since Seafood's 'Surviving The Quiet'. Leave the innovation to The Mars Volta and the politics to Million Dead: Jetplane Landing are here to rock, and this time it's fun, however long it lasts. 4/5