Mystery Jets are an indie rock band which formed in Eel Pie Island, London, England in 2005. The band has released four albums; Making Dens (2006), Twenty One (2008), Serotonin (2010) and Radlands (2012). Scarecrows In The Rain appears on the album Zootime. Other than Spirit and the Spanic Boys, father-son duos are rare in rock & roll, which gives the U.K. experimental rockers Mystery Jets a leg up right away: lead singer and keyboardist Blaine Harrison is the son of lead guitarist Henry Harrison. Its handy that they have a hook like that for reviewers to latch onto, because it can be difficult for listeners to get their head around the bands full-length debut on its own terms. Zootime is filled with quirky, interesting pop songs, but each seems to be in a different style from the others. For example, You Cant Fool Me Dennis sounds like an early, Barry Andrews-era XTC song as covered by Franz Ferdinand: the danceable stomp of the rhythm section keeps the spiraling tune from shooting off in a dozen different directions at once, but only just barely. Meanwhile, the first single Zoo Time has the cracked, disorienting post-punk-psychedelia vibe of a classic Teardrop Explodes single, but given an extremely contemporary electronic edge. Then theres the handful of songs that recall Kate Bush and/or Atom Heart Mother-era Pink Floyd. Honestly, none of it makes a lick of sense, but unlike, say, the Beta Band -- whose entire shtick was that the parts of their music never fit into a coherent whole -- theres a shapeliness to Zootime that suggests the record was constructed from some inscrutable blueprint thats just naggingly out of reach. [Zootime was constructed using 9 songs from the bands UK release Making Dens and three others (including the energetic romp Scarecrows in the Rain) taken from singles and EP releases].
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 07:12:46 +0000
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