★★★★☆
The Mystery Jets are a band I can proudly say I’ve grown up with: I usually played ‘Two Doors Down’ on my 1st gen iPod on the bus to school and ‘ Serotonin’ characterised the sound of a house party. The band’s homecoming gigs in the sticky suburban clubs of south-west London have always been a cause for celebration. But as time goes by and more and more bands that emerged in the early noughties fall off the radar, evolution and adaptation are more important than nostalgia and sentimentality.
Opening track and lead single from the album, ‘Telomere,’ opens with Blaine Harrison’s crescendoing falsetto vocal line (somewhat reminiscent of Thom Yorke), while uplifting chords and a slow rhythm maintain interest through the use of a range of keyboard effects, engineered to evoke the extra-terrestrial. This particular feature permeates almost all of the songs on the album, from the synth lines to distorted echoes and fade-outs; the result of four years’ recording and self-production. The balance between guitar-driven urgency and electronic aloofness is struck almost perfectly in ‘Bubblegum’ with its anthem-like synthesisedorgan hook, and in the lighter, more relaxed ‘Bombay Blue’. Acerbic, captivating lyrics sit alongside new-fangled atmospheric oddities; from the strange, wonderful weirdness of ‘Blood Red Balloon’ (“You are made of water / slowly synchronising with the moon / that rises and sea in front of you / like a blood red balloon”) to the reminiscing theremin and orchestra-backed power ballad ‘1985’ (“Saturn will return / back to 1985 / when we were just a spark / in two star-crossed lovers’ eyes”), and the distorted darkness of ‘Midnight Mirror’ (featuring lines from the 1993 Mike Leigh film Naked).
The Mystery Jets have certainly evolved, with the departure of bassist Kai Fish from the band, and singer Blaine Harrison’s decision to take a temporary solo lyric writing retreat.
Curve of the Earth has much hanging on it, and the band offers up the best of the lyric-heavy ballads of 2012’s Radlands, rocket-propelled by the synth sounds and sugar-coated choruses of 2010’s Serotonin into the stratospheric heights of new experimentation.
There is always a danger that too much reflective melancholy can allow a sense of doom and gloom to take over what should be an album heralding an ambitious and long-anticipated return.
However, Curve of The Earth will not fail to please age-old fans, and bring the best of their past into a new era.
