The steady rise of a band as unlikely as THE MYSTERY JETS is something to put a warm glow in this jaded hack’s heart. I mean, there aren’t many bands out there where a crucial member is a 50-something Dad of the singer, less alone that said Dad (Henry Harrison, of course, for those few still in the dark) bought, did up and lives in one of the Stones’ old haunts on Eel Pie Island in the middle of the Thames. Add to these attractively different ingredients the fact that The Mystery Jets are currently making a bizarre, but bloody brilliant racket and mashing up genres so much that words like ‘Prog’ can be bandied around unashamedly in their reviews and you’ve got a stage set for our unlikely heroes to bring forth a debut album of some magnitude.
So the question on everyone’s lips is can they follow through on the promise and deliver? Well, I’ve no intention of keeping you in suspense: yes indeed they can and then some. So let’s simply relax and enjoy the wonders on aural display, shall we?
Admittedly, it’s no harm that the Jets have already established their credentials with a string of baffling, but utterly wondrous singles and we get to savour three of them again here. “Making Dens” kicks off with “You Can’t Fool Me Dennis”, still arguably this writer’s favourite MJ tune and still surprisingly linear, poppy and muscular, though its’ quirks and tempo changes remain thrillingly intact. New single “The Boy Who Ran Away” comes roughly half way through and its’ Dexys-meets-Kinks-meets-The-Coral schtick still astounds, with melodicas, oddball percussion and bells on. Then of course there’s “Alas Agnes”: surely the catchiest single ever about trans-sexuals, backstreet operations and unrequited love to force entry into the Top 50.
Brilliantly, though, the remainder of “Making Dens” clears its’ own space and certainly doesn’t require the singles to act as a collective crutch. Yes, at times – like on the crazed, Lord Of The Flies chanting, fuzz bass, mellotrons and home made percussion of the wacky “Zoo Time” and the wafting epic-ness of the closing title track – the dreaded P word (clue: I don’t mean Punk here) rears its’ ugly noggin, but these tracks are nonetheless fascinating workouts in their own right and every bit as much the products of The Mystery Jets’ feverish 21st Century imagination and hardly rehashes from King Crimson or (Lord ‘Elpus) Emerson Lake & Palmer’s back catalogue, so let’s get some perspective here.
Elsewhere, possibilities set themselves up like tripwires to snare you. “Purple Prose” – guided by the superb Kai Fish/ Kapil Trivedi rhythm section – manages to be quirky, funky, excitable and world-weary in the space of a single song, while the initially gentle, folksier aspect of “Soluble In Air” (acoustic strumming, glockenspiel and tumbling piano) takes on a wholly darker twist or two when you consider the afterlife blues of the lyrics and that curious, nagging chorus (“Ground to dust in the dark earth, oh let me be soluble in air”) which has the ability to capture you in spite of yourself.
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As befits a band who collectively idolise Syd Barrett, this stream of English psych-whimsy and the ability to harness folksy frameworks into something considerably darker and more forbidding also informs two more of the record’s stand-out moments, “Horse Drawn Cart” and “Little Bag Of Hair.” The former opens with the brooding lyric “if you don’t trust me I’ll fall” before the band play it dark, rustic and chromatic, while “Little Bag Of Hair” finds Blaine Harrison bemoaning “I’ve got a crush on a girl, but I’m gonna have to work on” before going on to rhyme “ice cream blender” with “pocket money spender” with the wide-eyed glee of the Super Furries’ fellow starsailor Gruff Rhys. Whether it’s a clarinet or an oboe which is parping away in the background is one of many small, but surprisingly significant details you’ll find yourself mulling over as you return to this album over the next number of months.
Because return you surely will, for in crafting this excellent debut the Mystery Jets have carved out a niche for themselves which is theirs and theirs alone, whatever noises the greater press may decide to make about it this or next week. They make their attitude clear on “You Can’t Fool Me Dennis”, when Blaine sings “it always pays to be brave, from the cradle to the grave” and with “Making Dens” they demonstrate it’s still possible to display the courage of your convictions even in this increasingly precarious world.
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