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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Dad for it. On the phone from Manchester one Sunday lunchtime, on a “neverending tour”, Mystery Jets’ 20-year-old singer and keyboardist, Blaine Harrison, sounds very chipper despite finding no time whatsoever these days for a slap-up roast and a snooze in front of the telly. Hardly. After driving through the night from Cologne, life on the Mystery tour bus has left the Jets “absolutely exhausted, but handling it well”. Harrison is ablaze with enthusiasm despite the fatigue: “The best thing about all this is that you’re living your life without feeling you’re doing a job, or striving for a career. And to wake up every day in a new town ordering something new to eat in a new venue…[he rants on]” – Yep, still on tour with the equally fresh-faced Arctic Monkeys, Mystery Jets are making the most of it. “We’re all in pretty good shape, but the hangovers in Hamburg were really nasty,” recalls Harrison through the haze. “We tasted the finer side of German nightlife: the strip bars of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn.” This is a total rites-of-passage stuff for the seemingly virginal Eel Pie Islanders, something more akin to teenage squaddies circa WWI losing their cherries in continental knocking shops. Yet, having given their oldest band member, Blaine’s 55-year-old guitar playing dad Henry, “an education in nightlife”, and lost their drummer Kapil Trivedi for a night, the only thing they’ve really given their European lady fans are “autographs”, while back here in Blighty they’ve “signed boys’ nipples in Brighton”. Oh the joys.  It’s all looking good for Mystery Jets, but pondering the downside of being a band pursued by the music press, Harrison is irked somewhat by the column inches spent “going on about the way we look, instead of talking about the music”. Despite accusations of “wackiness” from certain quarters, the Jets’ bizarre onstage melange of junk shop flotsam, psych-folk, scrapyard punk and demented pop certainly makes for arresting entertainment. Their Bonzo Dog Python Floyd-ish debut LP, Making Dens, is no masterpiece, but the playful un-preciousness of their sound is an odd and compelling must. Recent addition to their sonic arsenal is an infamously Rolf Harris-endorsed Stylophone, while the Jets are well into making nutty noises and messing things up. Harrison can’t wait till things calm down so he can get back home to Eel Pie Land, though. “We can plug in our vintage keys and experiment, and get a week here or there to write new stuff. There’s never time on tour…” A bizarre intergenerational funhouse of sound then, Mystery Jets make the best Dad Rock around.
Stuart Turnbull
Mystery Jets – Making Dens, released 13 March 06 on 679 Recordings.
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