Album: Mystery Jets <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Making Dens, 679

Andy Gill
Thursday 02 March 2006 20:00 EST
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Hotly tipped as one of this year's breakthrough acts, Mystery Jets may ultimately suffer from the same kind of hype that's being laid on Corinne Bailey Rae's shoulders. Drawing attention partly for a line-up that features a teenage singer, Blaine Harrison, alongside his guitarist dad, 55-year-old Henry, the outfit were started when Blaine and best mate/guitarist Will Rees were just eight, as an experiment by Henry to see what would happen if kids were raised on prog-rock. The results are not entirely appealing - and less antipathetic to Britpop than might be hoped: with its spindly guitar lines, noodling keyboard bed and cascading harmonies, "Purple Prose" is prog-rock with a punchy bonhomie, like a cross between Supertramp and Supergrass. Elsewhere, "Horse Drawn Cart" offers a sort of shanty-style prog-folk akin to The Incredible String Band, and "You Can't Fool Me Dennis" has an indie-pop charm, but there are too many tracks that indulge pointlessly convoluted riffs, cycling keyboard ostinatos and unedifying lyrical whimsy. Bizarrely, the surgery in "Alas Agnes" means that there are two songs featuring auto-castration in this week's albums - is this a new trend, do you suppose?

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Horse Drawn Cart', 'You Can't Fool Me Dennis'

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