Author: Adam Kidd

Curve Of The Earth is Mystery Jets long anticipated fifth album, coming nearly four years after their last offering Radlands saw the surprise departure of original bassist Kai Fish, a few weeks before the album was released. Curve Of The Earth was mostly recorded in a studio space the band built in a disused button factory in Stoke Newington and solo recording sessions by Baline Harrison in a cabin on the Thames Estuary. A labour of love, it took two long years of sessions, but their attention to detail has clearly paid dividends as these nine songs represent the bands most mature and personal work to date. It's a record that catalogues Mystery Jets as they shift into a new phase of their musical muse, accompanied by new recruit Jack Flanagan on bass and as original members Blaine Harrison, Will Rees and Kapil Trivedi draw towards the close of their twenties.

 

It's a moment that is summed up in the album's centrepiece '1985' when Blaine sings, “Saturn will return us back to 1985, when we were just a spark in two young star-crossed lovers eyes”. The Saturn Return is a significant moment in astrology, it's the time in a persons life when the planet Saturn returns to the same point it was in the sky when they were born. It occurs in people's late 20s, lasting from 27 (that oft-fated age for rock-stars) until you hit 30. It's seen as a wake-up call, especially if you've spent your twenties partying or day-dreaming, this is the moment when you're supposed to suddenly feel like it's time to grow up. Lyrically the album draws on this new life experience, the songs are often introspective, nostalgic, reflective. Musically, while their hallmarks of fine melody and clever arrangement are ever-present, the mood has shifted yet further from the cheeky, jaunty guitar pop that made their reputation in the mid-noughties. Analogue synths play a big role in the sound of the album through many layers of synthetic sounds, there's a lot of big epic reverb at play and the tempo throughout is slow and steady, while the mood tends to be edgier, grittier and at the same time dreamier than anything they've put out to date.

The album begins with a repeating high pitched guitar motif which stays in place while piano chords shift beneath whilst a typically soaring melody from Blaine Harrison floats above. 'Telomere' is the shortest track and an obvious choice as first promotional single for the album. Telomere's are the bits at the end of our DNA that protect our cells from degenerating. Scientists currently think controlling our telomeres might be a way to stop ageing. 'Bombay Blue' is breezy with a groove that, through a buoyant bass-line and some lovely touches of what sounds like a Fender Rhodes electric piano, seems to straddle the lovely line between OK Computer-era Radiohead and Moon Safari-era Air. Within a few listens I find 'Bubblegum' growing to become one of my favourite pieces on the album. It's another song wracked with anxiety about growing and changing. “If only I could learn to let go of the hand that first held mine,” sounds like it could be a reference to Blaine's father Henry, an ever present influence and contributor to The Mystery Jets from their first inception, who is conspicuous in his absence in promotional material for the album. Whether his name will show up in the liner-notes remains to be seen, but you could imagine this track sees Blaine pondering working without that long-term collaboration with his father. Putting pure speculation aside Blaine's gritty vocals on the verses here are easily one of his finest performances on record. The palm-muted guitars, with their growing tension, sounds almost like Springsteen or 80s U2, but when a cheerful synth melody jumps out at you it's a complete surprise. The hook is not a million miles from the sort of thing Avicii might weave into one of his house tracks and the contrast is brilliant, a strange marriage of two disparate elements that somehow works beautifully.

An 80s synth bass arpeggio introduces 'Midnight's Mirror' accompanied by a sample from Mike Leigh's Naked; “Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night it was never weaker,” a curious expression cooked up by Johnny, the lead character of the gritty drama who runs from Manchester to London to escape a beating for a rape he has committed. It's the first vocal on the album from Will Rees, seemingly about making the same mistakes again and again, as we wake with “eyes like piss holes in the snow”. This track features some great moments of dub-wise drumming from Kapil Travedi, in fact the groove throughout is really interesting, with heavily affected live drums (think gated reverbs of the 80s) augmented by synth drums, giant hand claps and bubbling arpeggios that recall Cliff Martinez's compositions for the film Drive, or Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner. The falsetto mellow chorus is another unexpected twist, a sunny California moment that takes away the edginess melodically but still seems to retain a slight twist. The aforementioned '1985' is a stark piano ballad, with eerie synth sounds and a melancholy melody. This track has a huge flourish after a couple of minutes, when half-time drums are ushered in by soaring strings – a lovely moment at the heart of the album. 'Blood Red Balloon' has a real Pink Floyd feel to it with it's tight close harmony vocals and unconventional, dense arrangement. Even at this slow pace The Mystery Jets conjure up a danceable groove for their progressions to float above, there's a certain funk to their playing that exceeds anything Pink Floyd produced that I'm aware of, and moments on this track really showcase a great rhythm section bond between Travedi and Flanagan. There are tonnes of retro analogue synths and a succession of sections, with each melody line seemingly catchier than the last, even though, at nearly seven minutes in length, this is far from conventional pop single territory.

'Taken By The Tide' begins with luscious acoustic and electric guitars and on this second half of the album I started to notice moments where the accidental human noise of people playing their instruments has been lovingly preserved; plectrum scrapes, fingers sliding up fret-boards and delay flutters pepper certain tracks – the sort of noise that often gets smoothed away and eq'd out of modern pop mixing. I feel it adds a sort of fragility and fallability to the mellower moments on the record. Whilst 'Taken By The Tide' is another nostalgia-soaked ballad it also comes with a huge chorus. The lyrics, “brother I thought you'd be there until the very end, you were my rock upon which I could always depend” will certainly lead to some speculating if this song is addressed to their departing bass player, but it could reference any lost friend, as we grow and change the landscape of our social lives tends to shift. The guitars on this track are unrelentingly heavy when they kick in, the distortion is so thick and gritty and there's a great big riff that follows the chorus. Every time it rears it's ugly head I think the band are about to break into some crazy heavy metal wig out, but it never quite goes there.

'Saturnine' is usually used to describe someone of a gloomy, sombre persuasion and there's certainly a gloomy mood to this psychedelic mellow track. It begins with luscious falsetto ooh's leading to a strong vocal from Will Rees with some great observational lyrics, “to be famous and thin is the greatest goal of the age we're living in”. 'Saturnine's centre-piece is a slow harmonised guitar solo, that sounds like it belongs to another era. The album closes with 'The End Up' a mellow track, with acoustics, and a nursery-rhyme melody to the chorus, that recalls aspects of John Lennon's writing. It's a dark night of the soul kind of track, pondering whether we end up settling down with people because of love or circumstance. Ultimately the track ends on a positive, upbeat twist as the drum beat steps things up a notch and Rees turns his refrain of “I hope I end up with you” into a super-chorus that draws on the bluesy notes that sit around the earlier chorus melody.

This new album has to be seen as a real triumph for Mystery Jets, especially as, upon completing touring for Radlands, the group found themselves missing the key component of Kai Fish and lacking both a label and management company. The album title seems to refer to this new perspective, as astronauts escape earth's atmosphere and for the first time glimpse the shape and scale of the planet they have inhabited their entire lives. The Mystery Jets' new perspective and, perhaps, the freedom to operate without the pressures of label and management, has warranted a new level of sophistication. Married to their un-shaking confidence and creativity the results are a very fine collection of songs indeed. While 2008's Twenty One covered the familiar pop music territory of the transition from teenager to young adult Curve… explores that less travelled exit from the 20s and both albums have used a sound palette that is suitable to their themes. If I had one criticism, or perhaps more accurately one hope, it's that the band don't completely abandon the up-tempo vibe of their early work in future, as a man in his mid-30s I can attest that there is still plenty of fun to be had in that third decade of life! Still, I wouldn't interfere with the track listing at all, it's perfect just as it is. Here's hoping Caroline International, the band's new label, can help them weave the same magic as new label-mates The Maccabees did with last year's number one album Marks To Prove It. The moody, epic sweep of this album seems perfectly suited to these cold Winter months at the start of the year. As I take stock and work out who I'm going to be in 2016 I certainly think Curve Of The Earth wilt make an excellent companion.
Adam Kidd

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