Jets Overhead
Biography

Our band lives on a massive island that is pigment green with sharp grey mountains moving slowly and peninsula fingers stretching out and snagging the sea. The people in the band are all different heights and all have very different tastes in music and very different ways of expressing emotion or thinking about art.

We started making noises in a concrete basement on the wrong side of the railroad tracks in Victoria, Canada six years ago, and we had a lot of conversations with each other through many songs. Some of these conversations were long and sad and unsure of what they were about. Some of them were many voices talking at once but understanding each other perfectly and saying the same thing in different, unconscious ways; and after this type of conversation we would quietly get into our cars and drive back across the tracks and feel a beautiful buzzing in our heads.

We took a bunch of songs and recorded them in 2006 with Neil Osborne. We called the record “Bridges” and we played the songs to each other and also played them to other people over and over and over again all over Canada, America, and Europe. Sometimes there were five thousand people listening and sometimes not, but the band loved putting the music into the air and letting it go. When we got back to the island we put some heaters and carpets down in our concrete basement and dimmed the lights a bit and sometimes took a sip of scotch and stared at each other and thought about music and the strange relief of Fall but didn’t talk about it and instead had a lot of conversations with each other through many many songs. So many songs this time that the band felt new and old at the same time which is, I think, a wonderful feeling. In the middle of the winter we put all our instruments, carpets, heaters, lamps and do-dads in a giant truck and moved everything up to a cabin on another, smaller island off the western coast of Canada (Hornby Island, BC) that is crushingly beautiful and calm. We again asked Neil Osborne to join us, and together the band stood facing each other in a circle under an angled skylight. The sound of the songs filled the room and the sound would only stop when someone was frustrated or hungry or needed to watch some Flight of the Conchords or stand out on the porch in the dark and listen to the wind moving the huge trees.

We have put together a group of these new songs and we have called the record “No Nations”. The songs have played over and over again in our heads until they no longer sound like songs, but more like a list of a million decisions and feelings and moments. We are ready to put the music into the air and let it go.

–Antonia