There has been a resurgence over the past few years of Shoegaze style rock. While many of the more known bands of this style tend to mix it with other genres at this point (Alcest mixing black metal or Ringo Deathstar with some electronic music). Needless to say most bands take what is useful to them from the genre and move on generally involving the use of reverb in the vocals and guitar the choice to mix the vocals low or the use and abuse of guitar pedals.
Jet Black make note of their influences in the press release as involving early shoegaze acts particularly The Jesus And Mary Chain. How does this band fit into the shoegaze resurgence? Well im not sure really to be honest. Jet Black seem to play a style closer to a sadly forgotten 90's alternative act Failure. Noted Failure also had some signposts relating to shoegaze they were more focused on building smart hooks and equally smart and effective lyrics. So this to a certain end leaves Jet Black somewhat outside of the shoegaze genre at its most simple.
The record leads with "6am" which starts with somewhat heavy riff followed shortly by a vocal line that seems to resemble one Dave Grohl. This leaning towards 90's alternarock doesn't stop throughout the record. The band plays smart somewhat catchy tunes that do more to lean on the vocals than most first wave shoegaze would've wanted to. This allows the band to firmly step away from being a shoegaze band. So that leaves us with a band that is influenced by the first wave of shoegaze but seems to almost avoid showing it in full. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the band does a good job to make the songs build and soar to the sky without seeming to ridiculous.
The production is simple and focused on clarity making this a nice surprise. Much of shoegaze was over driven and didn't focus on clarity as much as atmosphere. The band makes many mentions of being a completely D.I.Y. project and for that i have to give it up to them because without doing any research the recording makes it very hard to tell at all.
Simply put given the right eyes noticing them Jet Black could do well for themselves. While they as a band sound rather young on this record one can hear some smart songwriting. This could be the beginning of something pretty great but sadly it is just beginning.
