CityLife

Mystery Jets back on the radar

NEW DIRECTION: Mystery Jets

WHETHER it was the curse of the difficult second album or a cathartic metamorphisis, the Mystery Jets certainly vanished off the radar after a rapid ascent.

Like many a young band, their first, fleeting taste of fame happened almost overnight.

They started life as a five-piece, with Henry Harrison, father of front man Blaine Harrison, taking a hands-on role in the song-writing department.

This family quirk, along with an art-house image and a penchant for playing pots and pans on stage, saw them billed as a gang of hippy eccentrics.

It also gave lazy music journalists an easy hook for a story, propelling them to the forefront of a burgeoning music scene.

The "scene" was strangely familiar. The Mystery Jets started playing gigs in a crumbling hotel ballroom on Eel Pie Island - a suburban retreat near the centre of Twickenham.

The Eel Pie Club, based on the island, provided a venue for many of London's greatest acts of the 1960s - The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Eric Clapton to name but a few.

Fast forward 40 years and this post-Libertines breeding ground gave birth to a handful of promising new bands and artists, the cream of which included Jamie T and the Mystery Jets.

The final Eel Pie party, in early 2006, was attended by more than 600 people. By then the Mystery Jets had signed to Sixsevennine Recordings and quickly went on to appear on Top Of
The Pops, releasing a handful of singles and one album, Making Dens.

Making Dens

"The majority of the songs on Making Dens were about our past, our childhood," says Blaine, now aged 23.

"They weren't really representative of who we were then and we didn't really know enough about song writing to be able to express everything we wanted to say. We just had this Pink
Floyd look. We weren't being ourselves."

Eel Pie Island

Outside the womb-like surroundings of Eel Pie Island, the Mystery Jets went in search of their true sound. They spent almost two years on a tour that took in Europe, the US and Japan, including a stint on the road with Arctic Monkeys.

All that time, the spectre of the second album loomed large. 

The end result, Twenty One, was released in March of this year. It was produced by acclaimed London DJ Erol Alkan, rumoured to be in line to take charge of the next Franz Ferdinand album.

It represented an offbeat departure, not unexpected for a bunch of eccentrics, but the direction was still a bit of a shock. What band worth their salt would hold up the '80s pop ballad as a key inspiration, I hear you ask?

"I don't know," says Blaine, "there's a lot to be said for Phil Collins. Don't get me wrong, I mean we're not stupid, we know what's cheesy and what's not. We just wanted to show that we could write a proper pop tune."

It's little surprise that the new direction has caused confusion, but it served to draw a line under their evolution.

"The whole theme of the album was about us growing up, even the title, Twenty One, was about a landmark age," says Blaine.

"The songs were about what we were going through at the time. It was about the present, but in a way that is already in the past now. We are already moving on."

After a summer off recuperating after a stint in hospital, Blaine, along with a trimmed down version of the band, is now charged up and ready to tour with a renewed vigour.

"We are all really excited about it," says Blaine.

"We have been working really hard on the visual side of the show. There will be quite a few surprises on that front."

Catch a new, revved up, four-piece line-up, minus Harrison snr, at Manchester Academy on Sunday, October 26.