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Mystery Jets: Twenty One

20th March 2008 | by Aidan Williamson

"Your friends would rather get high than play a game, always so sad how they change." By all accounts, the Mystery Jets sophomore album is as much about growing up in the estates of England than it is about the attitudes of their contemporaries.

"Twenty One" is both an immediate album, as well as a layered one. Whilst the driving force of the drums, bass and vocals - peppered with frequent, welcome intrusions, from guitar, synths and even saxophone - compound the hook creation of the band, the themes that play in the background equally attest to their seedy underbelly. Intangible hopelessness, paranoia, lost love, illicit love, lost innocence and the many paths of life all take centre-stage in this collection of tales. Such themes surely lend a polychrome and texture to the album that is an archaeologists dream.

Bowing to peer pressure does present the bands only main concern, the repeated use of skivvy chanting chips away at the veneer and place the band into territories to which they do not belong, namely Kaiser Chief-land. The same applies for when the band seek to fly too close to lands already discovered by fellow Brits such as Bloc Party, yes it's applaudable that the Mystery Jets are trying new things, but it should never be a band's aim to remind their listeners of better songs and other bands.

With an klaxon opener that could just as easily belong The Donnas's "Bitchin'", the scene is set for a thoughtful insight into the troubled world of the average English neighbourhood. "Flakes" pumps a tremendous amount of tumult into the story with it's lamentatious chorus of "the troubles they change / for when you awake / they fall through your fingers in flakes. "

"Two Doors Down" loses some of the built up charisma and depth with it's rather silly depiction of a man falling in love with a neighbour through the invading noise from her house. Much lee-way is bought though, with the early inclusion of "Young Love", which sees the Jets spar vocal lines with British sweetheart Laura Marling as they deconstruct the hurt of faceless feelings in a Rashamon styled song.

The age-old 'lack of full-length cohesion' may raise it's ugly old head on occasion, but never so much that you feel that you're entering mix-tape terrain. Hopefully, despite his decision to step out of live performances, Henry Harrison will continue his input into the band, for the mixture of world-weariness, philosophical insight, grounded storytelling and light-through-the-clouds attitude is surely something which the Mystery Jets wouldn't want to lose.

Rating:  7 / 10