Australians snapped up by the majors at the peak of the mainstream garage-rock revival, Jet belatedly topped the American charts in 2004 with “Are You Gonna Be My Girl,” a thin rewrite of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” spiced with a hint of The Jam’s “A Town Called Malice.” Any rock band that lifts from other rock songs is begging for a critical backlash—a decade earlier Elastica had been subjected to the same uproar—but given the extent of Jet’s “borrowing,” their backlash has been particularly harsh. In the space allotted for a review of Jet’s last album, for instance, Pitchforkmedia instead posted a short YouTube video of a chimpanzee urinating in its own mouth. The band hopes to make a more favorable impression with its upcoming album, Shaka Rock, which is set for release next month.
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