Send "Mystery Jets " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Mystery Jets are the inheritors of Britpop. Serotonin is produced by Chris Thomas, whose career has spanned decades of British pop, working with bands like Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols and Pulp. The album has a huge production to go along with that résumé, but the key to this album is melody. Mystery Jets write melodies so catchy that they sound like songs you’ve already heard—which is arguably the hallmark of every great pop song. If the song triggers a reminiscence that can’t quite be placed—although you may rattle off a few band names, they still don’t cover it all—this usually means something is working. That said, transcendence isn’t necessarily always a good thing. It can lead to an unsettling ambiguity, and in the end, the pretty melodies might just be a bit too generic. Whichever way you cut it, though, Mystery Jets aren’t unique enough. If you place the band within a British rock context of blue-eyed soul, their songs make sense. Yet the sheen and purity of melody verges on the commercial, without the critical context of a band like the Style Council. In other words, there’s something cheesy going on here. You can pinpoint the cheesiness in the lyrics. Mystery Jets do have a sense of humor about themselves. This is clear at the very least by the silly album cover: a glossy magazine style photo of the band in a turquoise tiled bathroom, doing bathroom things. The glossiness translates to the album; the humor doesn’t. The lyrics stick to the familiar range of platitudes and clichés that characterize most love songs, without any notable tinge of irony to save them. The first song, “Alice Springs”, repeats: “Better to have loved and lost / than to have lived and never loved anyone”. On “Lady Grey”, Blaine Harrison sings “And if life gives you lemons / you make lemonade”. Lyrics are almost never enough to make me dislike an album, but some of these do make me want to groan....full text |
| Bbc |
| Twenty One, the 2008 album which yielded Mystery Jets’ astonishing single Two Doors Down, was a step up in ambition and quality from the band’s bright 2006 debut, Making Dens. Neither album quite delivered on the band’s supreme early promise but, at last, Serotonin is the real deal. Although singer Blaine Harrison and his four cohorts (including his now non-touring dad Henry) make what could loosely be termed British guitar indie, their inventiveness and raft of ideas mean they operate on a plateau far above most of the competition. Their only obvious UK peers, who express similar levels of imagination, are British Sea Power and Super Furry Animals. Alice Springs, the excellent opener, finds Blaine’s rich, quivering voice married to a tremendous wall of sound of ascending synth, wordless vocal chants and guitar pummelling. At its biggest peaks, you can almost imagine Arcade Fire speeding down the Thames in a speedboat, to moan at the band for nicking their sound. Too Late to Talk begins with serious prog silliness, the kind most commonly associated with strange men sporting stranger beards. But it soon turns into a hugely affecting piano ballad, one bizarrely reminiscent of Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain, albeit minus Axl and a brilliantly overblown ending....full text |
| Guardian |
| It's not been the easiest of transitions between albums for Mystery Jets. Without a label following their wonderful second LP, Twenty One, the four-piece at least found a new home on Rough Trade for this third. And judging by its content, the intervening years haven't been without their personal struggles either. From the paradoxically upbeat shimmer of The Girl Is Gone to the epic tragedy of Lorna Doone, the album heaves and thumps under the weight of heartbreak. Not that it's a miserable set; the band claim 10cc were a big influence, and the slickness of late-70s soft rock is there on Too Late to Talk, while Show Me The Light reveals some lesser-heard dance influences. But more than anything, this is Mystery Jets at their finest: enchanting, infectious indie pop with a huge heart....full text |
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