It’s a gloomy Friday afternoon and Blaine Harrison, softly spoken singer of the Mystery Jets, is on the phone from a hotel room in Birmingham. He is unfailingly polite and thoughtful, hesi- tating to consider every question and scattering his speech with shy “I thinks” and “kind ofs” as if justifying his train of thought. When the interview is postponed part way through because Harrison is being ejected from his hotel room, he is charmingly profuse in his apologies even though we have already been talk- ing for a solid twenty minutes. It’s not exactly what you expect from the joint front man of a painfully fashionably indie-pop band, created in the founders’ early teens. But then again, Mystery Jets appear to have little regard for what others think of them.
Their latest album Serotonin is unashamed, full-throttle pop. A logical progression from 2008’s Twenty One but a clear break from the more determinedly indie stylings of their 2006 debut Making Dens. Harrison denies that the band made a conscious effort to sound more commercial but agrees that they have undergone a dramatic change of direction. “There was a radical change after our first album, because we weren’t really a pop band at that point in that we were very into writing long kind of epic pieces of music. I think we kind of felt like we wanted to morph into something different. Serotonin to me feels kind of like a continuation of where we set off with Twenty One. It’s a much more complete album… it’s a much more satisfying listen because it feels more condensed and concise.” Harrison describes how much of the final sound of the album was dictated by trial and error; the result of the natural progression of song-writing rather than any sort of master-plan. “Our songs kind of dictate
the direction of the band really… you can never really tell a song where to go, a song kind of leads you.” However, he does admit that at first, the album was “a bit of a heavy listen,” and it was only with tinkering that Serotonin found its voice as an out and out pop record.
Mystery Jets began when Harrison, still in his teens, began playing guitar with his father Henry Harrison and roped in his best friend Rees. The band has since expanded to include Kai Fish, primarily on bass, and Kapil Trivedi on drums. Henry Harrison has stopped tour- ing with the group although he remains heavily involved in the writing process. When I ask what it is like working with a family member, Harrison claims that age is no barrier and emphasises the value of having a connection to your co-writer, “it’s always felt very natural working with him…it’s hard to describe. But sometimes I almost get the feeling as if we can read each other’s minds, in the same way brothers and sisters can feel connected in that way. We are quite good at finishing each other’s sentences when it comes to writing lyrics. He’s more of a lyricist than a musician, that’s always been his greatest contribution to the band, the words.” I wonder if writing with friends and relatives leads to more organic songwriting and Harrison admits that it allows a greater openness but also asserts that he finds collaborations “liberating”. Their latest collaboration, ‘Out of the Dark’ with Count & Sinden was intriguingly conducted almost entirely by email, and Harrison admits that writing outside of the band’s occasionally “incestuous” permutations “certainly expands some
thing!” This is a band that seem quintessentially 21st century, genre-blending and self-referential with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop history. Twenty One embraced the clear 70s and 80s in- fluences with abandon, with tongue in cheek videos and references to a girl who listens to a “worn out 12 inch of Marquee Moon”. Harrison describes this retro streak as unconscious but admits that it was probably the result of a childhood spent in France where, without exposure to the wave of Brit Pop that was sweep- ing the UK, he was left only with “shitty dance music” and so instead became obsessed with his dad’s records.
“What you listen to when you’re a kid very much shapes who you are. I think I’ve always had a connection to records from the 60s and 70s and that was an incredibly fertile time in pop music. Now it’s much easier to self-reference things without meaning to because it’s 2010 and the 20th century was a time of massive change and inven- tion and lots of things were done for the first time.” Links with music past seem to punctuate the history of Mystery Jets. Serotonin very much feels the influence of its producer Chris Thomas, who has worked with such eclectic artists as The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd. Spending his teens on Eel Pie Island, an area that became famous in the 60s for attracting acts such as The Who and The Rolling Stones, also seems to have influ- enced Harrison’s ambition. He speaks about it with affection, describing it as “like being on Crusoe’s island, quite raggle-taggle, run down” and attempts to define why this small patch of West London has become such an artistic hub. “I think it has never been a very cool place and people are always doing things there to kind of make it cool. And it’s never really worked…”
Mystery Jets were, at first, famous for their illegal parties and on stage show- manship in this quiet West London sub- urb. Harrison describes these as more than youthful hedonism. “When we first came out we did sort of throw these par- ties but I think that was us not trying to conform with the music industry and the traditions of how a band should get signed and should create a following. I think putting on our own gigs was really a way of getting round the problem.” Struggles with the grim fundamentals of the industry appear to have remained a problem for the group, with the new album preceded by a change in label. I ask Harrison about the change and he admits that the group were dropped for financial reasons: “the head of Atlantic is based in America and he was probably looking to cut costs and just thought ‘who are the Mystery Jets?’.” Now comfortably signed to Rough Trade, who they refused in the beginning, Harrison seems content, “it feels good to go back to the start, how it should have been.”
When I ask what’s next for the band, Harrison describes more of the same: touring and making as many albums as possible. Tellingly, he also describes how he sees the future of a band that maybe sometimes gets a little too close to com- fort. “I don’t want Mystery Jets to be something we feel tied to, we should be able to have our own projects and do different things.” Nonetheless he seems keen to avoid any rumours of tension or splits, and in his final comment I get a sense of just how much his life is de- fined by the band that has dominated their lives for so many formative years. “Mystery Jets will always be our home, something we can always come back to” he says with real affection. And, with yet another apology and a goodbye, Britain’s most polite popstar is gone.