Oh, here we go again.  The NME force-feeding music fans another sixties and seventies influenced guitar band with fantastically exaggerated articles every week.  We've seen it before and it'll happen again: a debut album inevitably popping into the chart for a few weeks, then NME's blanket coverage of Jet, with them as cover stars virtually every week followed by smug journalistic back-slapping ad-nauseum.  It happened with The Strokes - even though John Peel and the now defunct Melody Maker had championed them first - but that was understandable after one listen to their fresh, vibrant first album.  The trouble is, that was two years ago, and while times (and sounds) change, the NME talks up The Strokes' mythical follow-up as a "masterpiece" before even hearing it - to the extent that even the most rugged of fans is thoroughly fed up of hearing about them week in, week out.

So, what of this currently hyped new "great white hopes"?  Well, sad to say that despite the sell-out crowd, it's basically nothing for them to write half the way around the world home about.  More tight guitar playing, more checklist sixties influences (Rolling Stones being an obvious one) and - alas - more long hair cuts and tired rants about disliking "techno".  Jet easily fall into the latest category of rock bands known as 'Good Musicians with Lack of Vision', whereby they make all the right noises and strut the right poses, but ultimately leave the listener feeling slightly vacant, if not embarrassed that they neglected an opportunity to invite their father out for an evening of bonding he surely would have enjoyed.

Jet are just another well-practiced text book rock act that impressed the right A&R man.  Although this time around a new guitar band has slightly heavier rock leanings in their sound, they offer nothing new in terms of appearance or music, stick rigidly to tried and tested methods of songwriting and performing, and are almost pathologically scared of embracing any kind of technology used in the latter part of the twentieth century.  While no one can expect every new act to be a Streets, this "we're authentic rockers with all the right influences adorning our sleeves" approaching is starting to wear very thin indeed.

Don't believe the hype.

Review: Andrew Morrison