We all know what a fraught business rock’n’roll can be and most of us wouldn’t be surprised to hear it if, say, Pete Doherty’s new album sessions collapsed due to a drug bust or persistent intervention from the police and paparazzi. Similarly, we’d not bat an eyelid if customs impounded, say, Madonna’s stage set on entering the country. Such stories are run of the mill in the glare of the excess-bound, disaster-prone music industry we grub around in.
However, it’s not often that a horde of predatory mice threaten to put paid to a band’s new album. I mean, as excuses go it’s not up to much is it? Losing the mater tapes after a fortnight of snorting coke off supermodels’ navels on board a cabin cruiser drifting in the Pacific? Mmm, OK, we could go with that, but mice? As in, small rodents that cats enjoy as a light snack? How could they possibly intervene with sonic excellence?
You’d be surprised, because thanks to an invasion of the little critters, much of MOJAVE 3’S Cornish studio/ rehearsal area was blitzed to buggery and beyond around the time M3 were putting the finishing touches to the follow-up to 2003’s largely-sublime “Spoon & Rafter”. Equipment as well as the place itself was partially destroyed and there was a large question mark raised over the state of the master tapes. Indeed, it was largely thanks to some help from experienced producer/ engineer Victor Van Vugt (P.J Harvey, Nick Cave, Triffids) at his NYC studio that M3 got the wonderful mixes they did and tha we are holding the version of their fifth album “Puzzles Like You” we are now.
And we should be truly thankful these songs survived the ravenous rodents too, because “Puzzles…” is by some way M3’s finest record to date. It fair brims with confidence and from the sun-kissed boogie of the great Byrds/ Big Star-bothering opening track “Truck Driving Man” onwards, you’re in for a real treat, mark my words.
The main thing “Puzzles…” has which none of M3’s previous albums possessed is an unashamed embrace of great pop music. Yes, several of the tracks hark back to the dreamy, country-tinged aspects of their previous outings (not least the drowsy and dignified “You Said It Before” and the delicious canter of “Running With Your Eyes Closed”) while inviting guest Melvin Duffy along with his tasty pedal steel is again an inspired decision, but overall this is a Mojave 3 on top of their songwriting game and on the trail of the pop silverware like never before.
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Recent single “Breaking The Ice” demonstrated this new confidence in spades and it’s a cool track, but quite easily outstripped by much of the opposition here. For instance, cop a listen to Big Star Baby”: it’s probably not a tribute to Alex Chilton as such, but it’s truly delectable stuff, wrapping itself in warm Hammond organ and more of Duffy’s canny pedal steel, and features Neil Halstead in truly confessional lyrical mode, tripping out lyrics like “every woman I’ve ever loved has been some kind of fuck up” with the intensity of a young Costello.
Elsewhere, Halstead’s tongue is clearly inserted in his cheek on “Kill The Lights”, where he sings “I’m in love with the poet’s daughter/ she likes a man with his trousers shorter” (hurgh! hurgh!) over an impressively groovy backdrop. It’s not the only possible follow-up single either, because there’s also songs like the Attractions-style urgency of “Ghostship Waiting” and the crunchy “To Hold Your Tiny Toes” still in reserve and the band attack them like their very lives and career depend upon them.
Neither of which – hopefully – is the case , of course. But “Puzzles Like You” nonetheless is the sound of a band playing out of their skins, chock full of confidence and apparently reborn with purpose, drive and intelligence. They weren’t bad before by any means, but all of a sudden they’re twice the band they were before. It seems those mice must have put the fear of God in them. Blimey.
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