Releases
Mystery Jets - Serotonin Instores July 13th
Rough Trade and Beggars Group are pleased to present the third album from Britain’s Mystery Jets, Serotonin.
After stripping away much of the excess on their lovelorn and warmly-received 2008 album Twenty One, Serotonin sees the Mystery Jets mapping out entirely new musical territories: the synthesizer-fuelled perfect pop of ‘Dreaming Of Another World’, which begins as an aching soft-rock ballad before unexpectedly heading somewhere infinitely weirder.
You can hear echoes of ELO, 10CC, Fleetwood Mac and Supertramp rubbing up against the band’s own idiosyncratic, very British, and occasionally rather creepy psychedelic sensibility.
Produced by Chris Thomas, legendary producer of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure, the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK, John Cale’s Paris 1919 and Pulp’s Different Class, the album is available as a US import CD and LP, with bonus MP3 download coupon.
LP pressings come in gatefold heavyweight vinyl with bonus 7” single.
Videos for initial impact tracks ‘Flash A Hungry Smile’ and ‘Dreaming Of Another World’ are forthcoming,
as well as a 10 minute album documentary.
The band have already confirmed sets at this year’s Glastonbury, Lovebox Weekender, Reading and Leeds Festivals, as well as a one off performance at Somerset House on July 8th, with North American dates to be announced later in the summer.
“Flash A Hungry Smile” MP3 available now at www.mysteryjets.com
For more information, please visit www.roughtrade.com and www.beggarsgroup.ca
Early press on “Flash A Hungry Smile”:
“One of the catchiest things they’ve done yet”. – NME
“Quintessential English Indie pop”. – Indiescreet
“Pop hit!” – Fader
The Mystery Jets sit around a vast table, upstairs in a plush West London studio. Downstairs in the control room, putting the finishing touches to the third Mystery Jets album, Serotonin, lurks legendary Chris Thomas, of whom the Mystery Jets understandably seem a little in awe. “He can hear things that none of us can hear,” whispers guitarist William Rees. “He’s got dog’s ears.” “And he has the best stories,” nods lead singer Blaine Harrison. “The anecdotes are just unbelievable.”
It is, the band concede, all rather a long way from their ramshackle beginnings in the Eel Pie Island boatyard where the Mystery Jets staged impromptu Saturday night gigs that brought them to the attention of the wider world in 2005. When they emerged, they seemed like a band entirely unlike any other: the lead singer was on crutches, his father was on guitar – Henry Harrison had formed the band with his son and Rees when the latter were both 8 – some of the lyrics were in Latin and the prog rock of King Crimson and Yes was loudly touted as an influence on their debut album Making Dens. “We wanted to be Crimson, Yes, the Floyds and Genesis all at the same time,” says Blaine, “then The Libertines were massively influential.
And some weirder stuff too,” he adds, as if forming a band influenced by King Crimson, Yes and Genesis with your dad when you were 8 wasn’t sufficiently peculiar enough. “There was Afrobeat and Can as well.
Every song on that album had five synthesizers on it and a harp and a wizard’s hat, field recordings of tramps, people sawing wood and hammering. By the time you got onstage you were playing bells with your feet. It was all over the place, but it represented what we wanted to be. We were,” he nods, “ a very confused bunch of kids, very enthusiastic.”
It’s an odd way of going about things, but then again, “an odd way of going about things” could have been the Mystery Jets’ motto, right from their earliest days, when covers of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb and Richie Havens’ La Bamba nestled alongside an 11-minute prog instrumental. And odd way of going about
things or not, they seem understandably delighted with the results. “It feels like we know what we’re doing,” nods Blaine.
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