The Jet Age

The Jet Age emerged as a power trio based in Washington, D.C., crafting thematically driven indie rock with a strong political edge that recalls the Wedding Present, Hüsker Dü, and the Who. After Eric Tischler’s earlier, more conventional power pop outfit the Hurricane Lamps disbanded in 2004, the singer and songwriter assembled the new group alongside bassist Dave Meyer and drummer Pete Nuwayser. Bass duties shifted during the recording of their debut when former Hurricane Lamps member Greg Barrett stepped in to replace Meyer. That first album, Breathless, appeared on the band’s own Sonic Boomerang imprint in 2006. While developing material for the next release, Tischler found himself with three stylistically unrelated songs that resisted cohesion; he remembered an observation from Pete Townshend, one of his key influences, about how a “brief” made songwriting flow more readily. Taking that notion as a prompt for a Quadrophenia-style concept record, Tischler wove the tracks together around his own political disillusionment and anxieties concerning the well-being of his wife and two children. The resulting second album, What Did You Do During the War, Daddy?, arrived in late 2007. Two years afterward the band issued a more intimate third LP titled In Love. Their fourth outing, Domestic Disturbances (2012), extended the sociopolitical focus by examining the personal toll of the weakening U.S. economy. Jukebox Memoir followed in 2014 and departed from the group’s usual conceptual approach, instead offering individual tracks that saluted the acts that had shaped them. Destroy. Rebuild appeared the next year and returned to politically charged storytelling, its songs composed in the wake of the 2014 midterm elections and the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri.