Crossing the Bridge: An Interview With Jets Overhead

Hailing from the mountainous coast that is British Columbia, Jets Overhead, formed in 2003, have toured the globe and as a result followed up their EP with their first full length album Bridges. The thoughtful and self-aware album is sure to stand apart from the crowd of a lot of today's loud gimmicky rock/pop albums. The fivesome have toured with Our Lady Peace and have also hooked up with 54-40 but now they're ready to make a name for themselves.

Guitarist Piers Henwood and drummer Luke Renshaw took a momemt to chat with us about music videos, big city vibes and the Bob Dylan experiment.

JXM: The album Bridges seems to have the laidback, west coast vibe with smooth vocals and lingering riffs, unlike a lot of rock albums which come out of the east coast, which are heavy, hard and fast. Has the west coast lifestyle been an influence on your music and the record?

Luke Renshaw: Well...yes and no. I think we'd still be writing the music we write regardless of our settings... But yes, there is a level of isolation you can't ignore when you live on an island like ours. It's hard to get used to, even though I've lived here for basically my whole life. It's really hard to leave.

JXM: Bridges was produced by Neil Osborne of 54-40. Can you tell us how that came about and what the experience was like to be working with such a Canadian icon?

Luke: We had played some shows in past with Neil here and there, and we had all got along really well. When it came time to do the record, he just seemed like the obvious choice. Neil has a really nice way about him, and a really great approach to production. He was great at articulating ideas with visual metaphors and language, which was helpful in pursuing the diverse sounds we were going after on the record.

JXM: What other influences were there on the making of the record?

Luke: What some people forget or overlook is that we did most of the album smack dab in the middle of Vancouver...So there's definitely a little bit of the big city on that record as well...I think there's also traces of other places we'd played the year before...Ireland...England...Los Angeles....an assortment of them really. The intention was to make an album that combines a sense of travel and movement with great songwriting. One quarter experimentalism, three quarters traditional songwriting values.

JXM: What would you say are the main differences between your EP and the Bridges LP?

Luke: Well the EP came out a little before my time actually... I'm the newest member of the band...But from a listeners point of view, I think the EP has a little bit more of a pop sensibility. It still stays consistent with Bridges though (the drones, the breathy vocals etc.). Bridges is definitely the most laidback out of the two. It wasn't a conscious decision to make a really mellow record like that...it just kind of happened.

JXM: The LP seems to be more mature than the EP in the sense that it doesn’t have that same tone of feeling slightly lost such as Mirror, Mirror and instead it feels more “grown up” in that your comfortable in your own skin. As well the EP seems to be about not just rebelling against the system but more about asking the right questions. Was there a “growing up” phase between the two records?

Luke: Yeah you could say that...I think we all grew together definitely. There was definitely a lot of issues we had to deal with between the EP and the record that changed our dynamic with each other. I don't mean in a bad way at all though...just different. Adam and Antonia had grown a lot closer since the EP days, and I think it really comes through in their harmonies on Bridges. There's definitely a depth to Bridges that the EP lacked...that could be translated into there being more songs on the LP (obviously) but the songs are a lot heavier.

Piers Henwood: I think the LP is more grown up sonically in the sense that it's slightly less urgent and frantic. We intended for it to feel like a road-trip, and within that we wanted to capture the eternal search for meaning, the quest for the Path with a capital 'P' or The Way, so to speak. Lyrically, I think the title track (Bridges) captures this most closely along with the first song, This Way. Bridges is about a lost sign past the city containing "secrets that you can't know", and the intention is to capture that duality that exists in the search to understand the mysteries of life....the competing notions that the greatest meanings are know-able versus unknowable (or at least ungraspable through human faculties). The song gives a partial answer to the question in the chorus lyric "We can take you there / please don't follow". Again another contradiction, but one that intends to speak to the "Path" being a wholly individual pursuit as opposed to a collective one. Whatever may be knowable at the deepest level may have to be discovered by the individual alone, and not through inherited thought...be it religion, existing trends in so-called spiritual practise, whatever.

JXM:All your videos are very visual, such as Sun, Sun, Sun and Seems So Far. Are you involved in the process and conception of your videos?