A new shine on this Jet

THE specter of death haunted Australia’s Jet just as the throwback rock quartet’s first album, “Get Born,” began gaining popularity. On the road in 2003 with Southern roots rock group Kings of Leon, singer-guitar player Nic Cester and his brother, drummer Chris, learned their father had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

“Just as the band was reaching these great heights, he was dying,” says Nic Cester, seated in Hollywood’s famed S.I.R. rehearsal space. Adds guitarist Cam Muncey: “It took the success totally out of context so it didn’t mean anything anymore.”

Due in large part to the group’s straight-ahead amalgam of yesteryear “rawk” -- Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, the Beatles and AC/DC are all conspicuous influences -- “Get Born” sold 3 1/2 million copies worldwide and yielded the hit singles “Cold Hard Bitch” and “Are You Gonna Be My Girl.”

But after the Cesters’ father died in 2004, “I didn’t [care] about anything anymore,” Nic Cester says. “I went to some pretty dark places, disappeared off the face of the Earth for a while -- nobody even knew where I was. I didn’t even want to be in the band.”

Since then, however, Jet has managed to regroup. Globe-trotting from Barbados to Massachusetts to Australia and then Hollywood, the band wrote and recorded some 40 tracks with producer Dave Sardy, then whittled the list to 15. The resulting album, “Shine On,” will be released on Atlantic Records in October.

“It ended up being an incredible experience,” Cester says. “We came back from a wretched place, dealt with our demons and our grief, and wrote some really special songs. The process was really cathartic.”

Several of the CD’s ballads deal directly with what Jet went through to get its creative mojo back.

“ ‘Shine On’ is a song I wrote from Dad’s perspective. It’s like his words to us, to our family. And there are songs about how unhappy we were,” Cester explains. “But this is Jet and there are still rock songs. ‘Stand Up’ is the biggest rock song in the world -- like ‘Cold Hard Bitch’ times five. Lyrically, our first album was a stinker.”

“We pushed everything we started further into the red with this one,” Muncey says, munching on a panino.

Jet kicks off an American tour this fall and expects to perform in Los Angeles in early October.

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Deans of hip-hop reunite, if briefly

THE members of two seminal rap groups that peaked during hip-hop’s so-called Golden Era -- the late ‘80s to mid-’90s -- EPMD and A Tribe Called Quest, are reuniting briefly this fall, putting their respectively acrimonious splits at least temporarily in the past.

EPMD’s Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith (the letters stand for Erick and Parrish Makin’ Dollars) will take the stage together for the first time in eight years in October at the B.B. King Blues Club in New York’s Times Square -- a date timed to dovetail with VH1’s annual “Hip-Hop Honors” broadcast.

Queens, N.Y.-based A Tribe Called Quest (that is, founding members Q-Tip, Phife Dog and producer/DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad) will headline the first leg of the 15-city video game sponsored 2K Sports Bounce Tour, the group’s first outing together in six years. Tribe reaches Los Angeles (at a venue to be announced) on Sept. 10.

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Dylan album to debut on XM

AT the stroke of midnight on Aug. 28, Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times,” his critically hailed first new studio album in five years, will have its premiere on XM Satellite Radio -- one day before it hits record stores. The freewheelin’ folk-country-blues-rocker began hosting a weekly program called “Theme Time Radio Hour” on XM in May.

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Hilton heiress defends her chops

IT took some major league suspension of disbelief for most celebrity watchers to get their heads around the idea that Paris Hilton just ... possibly ... might make a credible pop star.

But now that her lead single “Stars Are Blind” has become an oft-downloaded track and Top 40 radio mainstay, and with her album “Paris” finally set for release Tuesday, Hilton player-haters have found a new way to impugn her pop legitimacy.

Speculation has raged that after hiring some of the best songwriter-producers in the business to craft her album, Hilton would likely go the Milli Vanilli route in concert-- if she performs live at all.

The celebutante would like you to know this is not the case. She has been working with vocal coach Seth Riggs (who has helped Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Michael Bolton, among others) and insists she will not lip sync when she launches a North American tour next month, for which details had not been announced as of press time for Sunday Calendar.

“It’s the most embarrassing thing,” Hilton says of her vocal training. “For an hour, we do all these exercises, making the dumbest noises ever. It’s brutal.”

Further, she feels her pop musical bona fides should be beyond question.

“I know music. I’ve been going out forever,” she says. “I picked out my songs, made sure they were perfect for me.”

“I’ve been working with Robin Antin,” she says, referring to the Pussycat Dolls’ creator and choreographer. “We had auditions for hundreds of girls. I’m getting ready to get on stage.

“I love surprising people, and I think people don’t know me. I’m going to blow them all away.”