Mystery Jets - ‘Making Dens’ (679 Recordings) Released 06/03/06

 

In fact, what we get in ‘Making Dens’ is the finest collision of mushroom-giddy experimentation and effortless pop cleverness since The Coral’s psychedelic galleon first landed on the shores of the mainstream. The album’s first side sees the Jets not so much treading as bouncing on a spacehopper along the line between sonic exploration and taut pop hooks: a brief, rewound collage of sound beckons us into orbit around Planet Mystery before the almost Smithsian ‘You Can’t Fool Me Dennis’ brings us hurtling gleefully towards familiar ground.  ‘Purple Prose’ chants like Lodger-era Bowie over (‘I’m a tourist!/Oh Cairo!’) sparse Roxy Music funk, while ‘The Boy Who Ran Away’ is classic Mystery Jets, clattering about like a catfight amongst back-alley bins. Even the space-rock of ‘old’ track ‘Soluble In Air’ here is transformed into a warm, almost gallic pillow of folk. Half time: Prog 0, Pop 1.

 

In fact, as we move into the second half, a dose of unadulterated head-nodding, chin-stroking feels practically overdue. And so we get ‘Horse Drawn Cart’ – probably not a good move – and live favourite ‘Zoo Time’ – definitely a good move – just to remind us that it’s still Blaine & Co.’s party.  We even get a whiff of a concept (Blaine has told Gigwise that ‘Making Dens’ refers to how he would often use music as a form of refuge when growing up) as childhood themes come to the fore: ‘Little Bag Of Hair’ is a heart-wrenching tale of a childhood spent in and out of hospital (‘Nintendo machines in hospital never work’ being one insight into the mind of a young Blaine) while the title track – a thing of gentle, string-coated beauty – encapsulates the terrors that reign in the imagination of the young: ‘There’s a place called Hell/Spend some time there/In the dark I cast a spell/To bury all my fears’.  At times like this the album is an enchanting yet unsettling listen.  The Will Rees-penned ‘Diamonds In The Dark’ and the single ‘Alas Agnes’ stop the gloom from descending to the kind of depths from where only Lou Reed may emerge unscathed; but for long periods of time we’re in that same dark place as Blaine.

 

So, it’s full time, Prog has fought back, but Pop has just edged it. Should we be happy about this? This is, after all, the band who have more or less declared war on the beered-up beats of Hard-Fi. Well, yes, we should be happy. We should be ****ing grateful that 2006 has chosen to deliver us the schizophrenic, ramshackle, unclassifiable melting pot of ideas that is this album. Literate, eclectic and slightly mental – if this is what pop can be, then why the **** shouldn’t it be.