Not Many Experts

Liverpool’s skyline swings round, blurring the wealth of the waterfront and  the north’s rows of disused docks, just as the Mystery Jets launch into yet another new song that strengthens the many conjectures floating around that new album “Serotonin” could be their best work. No, I’m not sure I know how I got here either. And the hundred or so people jammed into the front of the Ferry Cross The Mersey are equally puzzled how their life has reached this confusing high-point, but most particularly how a boat of clichéd Gerry & The Pacemakers fame came to be carting around four southern lads looking like they’ve just fallen out of the set of a vintage film to save British guitar music. Literally nothing makes sense.

Yet there’s the proof. (A very good) half of new song “Flash A Hungry Smile”; a set opener that is as much a statement of intent to air their new material as it is the sort of melodic guitar-based genius that should be relaxing in the upper reaches of chart-success. However, as a certain somebody once said: “To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.” Well at least we’re sane, proved by one of my Oasis loving friends suggesting to me, in his clearly considered opinion: “the Mystery Jets? Who the fuck are they? Sound like one of your gay indie bands”. But I’d sort of prefer universal recognition of the Mystery Jets, and from the five or so new tracks that are thrust upon Liverpool’s Mystery Jets fans tonight, whilst it is of course too early to start predicting sales success, if the record turns out anything like it sounded live then its hard to see critics replying with anything other than widespread boring reviews communicating general positivity.

Behind all of this speculative and irrelevant bullshit, however, the greatest shock of the night was drummer Kapil Trivedi somehow managing to upstage his entire band (or as they are now known; the other three blokes who obscure the view of the Right Reverend Kapil Trivedi) whilst sat near to motionless behind his big slabs of wood and plastic, armed only with a set of half-comical and half-terrifying facial expressions, a general air of 1980s coolness and an unfathomable amount of drumstick floundering. We assume his intention was to show off, but, well, he definitely succeeded.

A common measure of success in live reviews is ratio of awkward:drunken dancing, and if we’re going to conform to this reviewering stereotype then we would have to conclude that; yes, drunken students do enjoy embarrassing themselves but thinking that they look unbelievably seductive whilst convulsing to the Mystery Jets. But it’s hard to blame them (us). After the 2008 release of “Twenty One”, the Mystery Jets piled out top-class single upon top-class single that both achieved a level of recognition unthought-of after the leftfield “Making Dens” and had even the notoriously grumpy Stalin twiddling frozen toes and sashaying hips in his grave.

Elsewhere, shadowy looking Chevrolet men lurk in corners, presumably just off their contract-killing shift and whispering into the ears of lone passers-by “Ey lad, fancy buyin’ a Chevvy on the cheap?”, two incongruously good looking women increase blood pressure of all straight men present (probably turned a few homosexuals as well), and a woman waiting for the Mystery Jets decides to mouth along to pre-gig Joy Division song, demonstrating to everyone that she thinks is watching her superior taste in music. Unfortunately, only I am watching, and I think she’s a knob.

The story of how this all came to happen is just as strange; the Chevrolet Unplanned tour allowed fans to elect via that flawed ideal of democracy where the Mystery Jets would play each week – each occasion in a suitably eccentric environment, and tickets were given away to talented local fans with a connection to the internet and the ability to use a mouse. The purpose of the tour, obviously, to promote Chevrolet’s new eco-friendly Spark car. Nothing immoral about that. Chevrolet tentatively distanced themselves from this by saying: “It’s a bit of both. It is a way of promoting the car, but we’re interested in showing people this is a fun car with a bit of style that you would enjoy driving round a city like Liverpool in.” Now to us, “showing people this is a fun car with a bit of style that you would enjoy driving round a city like Liverpool in” is practically a definition of promotion. But with Mystery Jets being led by the hon. Kapil Trivedi in-front of us, we don’t much mind, and as Mystery Jets draw their incredible set to a close with “Behind The Bunhouse”, the whole ridiculous situation makes sense, and we even want to buy the car.

Mystery Jets – Flash A Hungry Smile

Pre-order “Serotonin”. Buy a Chevrolet Spark.