Pauls Jets

In the organizer's words:

Everything collapses

After their previous album "Jazzfest", which had about as much to do with jazz as the Beatles, the Viennese indie pop band Pauls Jets are back with their fourth studio album. It bears the auspicious title "Morgen sind wir Fantasy" and is a bittersweet pop album on which the people in the songs are always on the verge of or already in the middle of a crisis.

Right at the beginning, with the album opener "Pompeii", it starts with the big end of the world: "Everything is collapsing, everything is collapsing!". Once again! And once again, the apocalypse is sold to us as a romance. Between fences, heat and snowstorms, a couple travels through the world. Two last people fall in love while everything around them collapses! Kitsch is the cure! The Jets sing: "The story ends, even if the ending is bad."

On the single with the pretty tapeworm title "Ich habe Angst so ohne dich kann ich nicht leben oder doch aber schön wärs nicht", there is still hope that the protagonist will be able to save his love beyond the dreary everyday life, but in the end he doesn't seem to care! We ask ourselves whether the couple portrayed here are the same ones who were still living unconditionally beyond their means in the intoxication of the night in the song "Smash " and: where has the magic gone?
But only briefly, because suddenly the song takes a turn and the Jets invite us to join them in a stadium rock chorus of "La-La-La", intoning "Hope dies last" to find a way out of the misery in the soccer calendar mantra. The Oasis feeling that millions of people have just rediscovered! Community! Consolation! A positive twist! On closer inspection, surely just the result of a collective fantasy. The piece can be seen here.

The fantasy conjured up in the album title itself is not dissimilar to the jazz festival for Paul Buschnegg: "Fantasy is something very nerdy and something that I adore but also despise with a safe distance. World Of Warcraft or Lord Of The Rings connect more people than you might think. There's something totally fascinating about dressing up as a knight with rubber swords. The idea that anyone can be a wizard, and secretly is, is the most beautiful, enchanting and forgivable fantasy of our narcissistic society". If only there weren't all the other imaginary wizards and sorceresses out there!

It was only logical that the Jets had to write a song about Harry Potter: "For me, Harry Potter is like the prototype of the indie boy. He wears old clothes that are far too big, glasses, is shy, hurt and at the same time the chosen one. I think a lot of young people secretly think they're Harry Potter!" says Buschnegg. The song sounds like an 80s tune on some random Italo-pop Instagram channel from yesterday's future.

Musically, however, the album otherwise draws on the entire lived pop fantasy of the last 50 years. As a nerd, you can hear a certain affinity to the extra-eclectic 90s indie favorites such as Bran Van 3000, Denim or the Super Furry Animals. But also a lot of millennial pop a la Sleigh Bells or English Teacher. And lots of trap, hip hop and scooter!

On the cover we see a tear emoji made of clay. Keyboarder Kilian Hanappi once brought the 10 kilos of Brandenburger clay with him from Berlin to Vienna. In the end, it took many days to give the sadness the right expression in an analog equivalent to the fast digital characters. And perhaps everyone felt a lot better after the manual work was done. Just as we, in turn, hopefully feel a little better after listening to this fabulous new Jets album.
"Sometimes sad music succeeds in making people happy! Especially when it brings melancholy people together! That's our claim! We don't want to bring anyone down!", adds Buschnegg about the healing bittersweetness that is often invoked in British pop music and which also makes up the magic of his band's music.