Sometimes, you can wear your influences on your sleeve just a little too proudly. The temptation to damn Jeepster before a note of their debut album has been played is therefore a strong one. Named after a T-Rex favourite, we all know what we’re going to get, right? Re-hashed glam rock played through a smear of mascara with a dash of glitter across the cheeks, surely?
Well, actually no. Formed from the ashes of O! The Joy, Jeepster – that’ll be Justin Goings, Kyle Marcelli and Jonah Wells to their mums – owe more to fuzz boxes, psych-rock, blunts and the more languid sounds of the West Coast than they do to the era of stack heels and bisexual brickies. Indeed, listening to Jeepster isn’t unlike rolling up a fatty at the end of the day and letting that acrid harvest fill the lungs. Not much seems to happen at first and then, before you realise it – Boom Shanka! – the sugary call from the pantry.
It’s on repeated listens that What If All The Rebels Died begins to open up. On first encounter, ‘A Day In The Dark’ induces a nonchalant shrug but its hidden charms are revealed thanks to a rolling, almost looped bassline, insistent electric piano and a phalanx of squalls and undetermined noises. The same goes for the heavy-lidded ‘Be Good In Your Neighbourhood’, which at times is almost too relaxed. Elsewhere, however – in the grinding ‘Fiction Fiction’ and the guitar-driven push and pull of ‘You Can’t Stop’ – Jeepster aren’t afraid to shift up a gear.
The album’s occasional shortcomings become manifest during ‘Ex Oh’s lazy couplet of "Paranoid Polaroid / Purple Steve Pink Floyd" but they do at least induce a smirk, in a similar vein to that provoked by Ian Astbury when he was in the height of his Wolfchild pomp. Jeepster aren’t a band that are going to be noted for originality, but what they lack in that department is more than made up for by an infectious enthusiasm that hints at stronger sounds to come.
