Archive – EP review: The Screaming Jets – Living In England

By STEVE MASCORD

SO YOU thought the Screaming Jets were funny gits who said ‘c**t’ a lot, but have now gone away with only Dave Gleeson’s on-stage nose mucus-throwing displays to remember them by? Wrong.

Living In England – a five-track teaser put out in Australia while the five-piece continue work on their LP – is aimed at proving that these blokes aren’t just mere yobs. They’re yobs with longevity!

This EP takes precisely 32 seconds to achieve its objective. That’s when Gleeson finishes the first verse “Tunnel” and Messrs Grant Walmsley and Brad Heaney plough in with one massive decapitator of a riff.

Joke band? Spent force? F**k off!

But as if they still don’t think they’ve proven themselves at the end of the opener, there’s even more diversity with the remaining two original compositions – “Meet Anybody” and “Living In England” itself. The first has an unusual arrangement and message, while the latter is a punk song (!) boasting the immortal line, ‘Living in England, I don’t have to act like I’m having fun’.

Now Johnny Cash may have been – as Gleeson claims – ‘the real king of rock’, but “Folsom Prison Blues” sees the Jets heading back towards joke status. But seeing as it’s on the B-side of this EP, we’ll forgive them.

While this collection is impressive, actually seeing the tracks being performed live is mind-boggling. The Jets are gathering power, and little will be able to stop them soon.

Gleeson grinned evilly after playing track five on this EP, their cover of AC/DC’s “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting To Be A Millionaire)”, at a club in Wollongong recently. “I f**kin lied, didn’t I?” he shouts. “It is!”

Make the most of it, Dave – you won’t be waiting long.

This article originally appeared in Kerrang!

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