Whoosh Upon A Star

The comeback motive – as the Stone Roses, Dexys and Pixies are currently proving – is a complicated thing.  We can, of course, in certain cases look at the six and seven figure offers and tap our noses, but for those acts not guaranteed a Festival headliner and global cash-crawl, it’s interesting to ponder the rationale that, years after splitting and (oft-times) running into the arms of conflicting wings of the legal profession, drives a collection of individuals back into one another’s creative embrace.

Unfinished business, yearning for a chemistry they’ve never subsequently accessed, mid-life crisis: it’s conceivable that all play a part. For Jetplane Landing, the reasons for getting back together were more bracingly prosaic and uncomplicated.
“Well, we had new songs that we thought other people should hear,” reveals front-man Jamie Burchill. “And we like rocking out together and having the craic.”
Anyone who knows the Derry band, will not be in the least bit surprised by this attitude – their early albums were saturated in punk spirit and clear-eyed practicality. It’s heartening to discover that this has survived into their current incarnation. Not only that, but, judging by their rabble-rousing new album, Don’t Try, rather than waste time trying to make up lost ground, Jetplane Landing have pretty much picked up from where they left off.
“These days we feel we have absolutely nothing to prove to anyone,” says Jamie. “The time between our last record and this gave me the chance to reflect on what we had achieved before and I came to the conclusion that we’d done pretty well. I think that’s where the original roots of the title, Don’t Try came from: we didn’t have to try anymore, we’d already done that. This time we were just going to let it come naturally.”
Which is not to say that Don’t Try is an exercise in complacent nostalgia. Tracks like ‘The Walls of Derry’ (“a vast tale of home, hope, stone and steel” says Jamie), ‘Broken By People’ and ‘Beat Generation...Ha’ show a re-energised, devil-take-em-all Jetplane – with a care-worn quality that wasn’t present in their earlier incarnation.
“We have more to say now because we’ve all lived through far more shit that people can possibly imagine in the last seven years. Show me a young person who thinks they understand life completely and you’re showing me a deadhead.”
If the band have changed, then the near-decade since their departure has proven even more tumultuous for the industry as a whole. For all the band’s experience, they are (in common with everyone else, it has to be said) sailing in still unchartered water. Jamie, though, doesn’t seem in the least concerned.
“The rise of the internet is the single biggest shift since our last record. We’ve always been a very DIY band. We were DIY when it meant being at a huge disadvantage to major label acts. Nowadays there is still a gap between major label acts an others, but the free and easy distribution of music and ideas via the internet has closed this gap dramatically.”
This sang-froid swing is entirely becoming to Jetplane Landing. Not trying seems to have worked out brilliantly for them.
“We have fulfilled our ambitions,” he concludes. “We all still like each other and just made the best record of our career.”

Don’t Try is out now