live @ Black Cat 9.2.2000
By the time Jets to Brazil took the stage at the Black Cat Saturday night, the club’s milieu had become decidedly moist: a sell-out crowd and the humid night air were giving the air-conditioning system all it could handle. It was fitting, though, since the Jets best music carries a certain emotional desperation that seems to sound better when the audience is sweating along with the band.
Jets’ pilot Blake Schwarzenbach, (formerly of punk-pop champions Jawbreaker) led the New York City quartet into the second show of its current US tour with “You’re Having the Time of My Life”, typical of the earnest, keening tunes on the band’s new album, “Four Cornered Night”. That record has only been in stores for a week, and many in attendance seemed more familiar with selections like “Sea Anemone” and “Sweet Avenue” from Jets first CD, “Orange Rhyming Dictionary”. Still, it was the newer material that sounded the most assured. With bassist Jeremy Chatelain anchoring while the guitars of Schwarzenbach and Bryan Maryansky surged emphatically, “Little Light”, “One Summer Last Fall” (which featured Schwarzenbach on keyboards) and “Your X-Rays” scored direct hits as the kind of literate guitar music that makes the Jets soar.
The group proved that a live setting is their ideal environment, making lines like “Do the stars conspire to pin us down/like butterflies”, from the song “Orange Rhyming Dictionary”, which seem awkward on record, ring assuredly in performance. Indeed, Jets to Brazil remained right on course through an encore of “All Things Good and Nice”, delivering an hour-long set impressively free of turbulence.
Washington Post, September 2000
