Magical Mystery Jets

They’re the UK’s most unlikely music heroes; they’ve written a single about an accountant called Dennis, they use kitchen utensils - including the mighty colander- as percussion, the lead singer’s dad plays guitar and they think Hard-Fi are repellent. Gigwise sat on a dirty pavement in the late summer Liverpool sunshine with charming vocalist, Blaine Harrison, to find out everything you need to know about Eel Pie Island’s finest, the Mystery Jets.

Dressed in a stripy jersey and cheeky neck scarf, with trousers tucked into woolly socks and brown leather brogues, the wild-haired Harrison bears more than a passing resemblance to lovable Aidensfield rogue, Greengrass. You know, the smelly one with a scratty mutt from ITV’s nostalgic wank-fest, Heartbeat. Except Harrison’s not tubby, with twitchy little piggy eyes, a white beard and a nervous tic. First things first, Gigwise ask him that, er, perennial muso favourite: “Have you ever wanted to kill anyone?” and grit their teeth waiting for a half-arsed tree-hugging response, but no, Blaine’s shrewd sparrow’s eyes twinkle and he tells us: “Yeah of course…most recently, the singer of Hard-Fi. We played the Secret Garden festival with him this August and he’s just the sort of person who would have bullied me at school. He was walking up and down the front of the stage, looking at the girls and saying things like ‘Alright poppet’ to them. They write second-rate pastiche songs. I find them repellent.”

Speaking of strange gigs, Blaine recalls a night even weirder than Hard-Fi’s Richard Archer apparently dribbling over pre-pubescent girls and addressing them by a name that we all know should be reserved for chocolate covered raisins: “I went onto stage on mushrooms last year…during the last ten minutes of the gig I forgot all the lyrics, lost my drumsticks and somehow returned with bleeding hands.” A moment when having your dad in the band maybe doesn’t seem like such a good idea after all…

But there’s worse, Blaine shivers at what can only be described as a childhood nightmare... when aged 11 or 12 he was playing with his dad and Will (the Jets’ guitarist) in a French bar. Harrison explains: “I was playing in front of a beer garden of completely drunk people and doing a particularly awful cover of ‘Comfortably Numb.’ Will struck the wrong key and the wrong chords and I couldn’t pitch it right, I strained for a bit, then just burst into tears.” Poor little bastard.

However, Mystery Jets have had some great moments too; Blaine asserts that his favourite gig was supporting the Futureheads at the London Astoria: “it has such an amazing heritage, they rolled red carpets out for the Futureheads and had a PA system the size of a house, you really feel like you’ve made it when you play there. Our first night was ecstatic, we were full of energy and we were actually sober for a change.”

This leads us nicely on to the topic of shoes (yes, we know, it doesn’t really - so don’t bother writing in to complain); Gigwise asks Blaine for his favourite type of footwear. Without hesitation he points to the aforementioned brogues, explaining: “I love brogues, especially the form of the brogue with flowery holes and two different types of leather – a bark brown section like snakeskin and a shiny, polished section.” Gigwise thinks it might know the answer to their next question: “What gets you out of bed in the morning?” Is it brogues they wonder? Wonderful brogues so shiny you can see your face in them? Actually, no: “I sort of like the idea of a hard day’s work” muses Blaine, “I like to have a pint in the evening after actually achieving something, achieving something can mean anything – meeting someone new, doing a piece of art (Harrison is also a painter) or writing a song.”