Mystery Jets - Making Dens (679)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
When making a den, regardless of how precise your blueprints, by the very nature of your endeavour you're bound to get a little mud on your knees. The only kids who make dens are ones for whom this is no concern. If anything, it's a welcome part of the process. The other boys can stay inside and play Championship Manager, but I'm going to climb a flipping tree and see what there is to see. Splinters won't faze me.
The Mystery Jets got mud all over the carefully drawn out plans for their den, but, one imagines, just decided it looked pretty good there, and carried on. Owing to the way this ramshackle collective write their songs, there was bound to be something of the unordinary to their debut LP. And yes, it can at times confuse to the point where you wonder what it is they were getting at, whether they lost track of the idea, or whether they had any distinct focus in mind in the first place. But to think of it as completely haphazard is to utterly miss the point of the Mystery Jets. If it's messy, it's because that'll be exactly how they wanted it to sound. 'Making Dens' is probably the most calculated mess we'll be treated to all year.
That it flows in spite of all these disparate ideas bouncing about all over the place is testament to the intelligence of its creators. In less ambitious, less masterful hands, interest in it would be difficult to sustain. Here, because of the genuine sense of shared vision and the peppering of utterly brilliant, progressive pop songs at considered intervals throughout (in this context the singles 'You Can't Fool Me Dennis', 'Alas Agnes' and relative newcomer 'Purple Prose' shine inexplicably brightly), it's at times difficult to concentrate on anything other than the sound making its way on to your ear drums, regardless of your present surroundings.
However, when they become too concerned with the intricacies of the flow, rather than letting it happen naturally, its vitality slips. The final third of the record seems to be the sound of a band bizarrely restrained by limits you can only assume they've imposed on themselves, finding it difficult to work within more conventional, laid back rules and regulations despite thriving so vibrantly when they show them little to no regard (as on the superb, space age shanty that is 'Zoo Time'). So one starts to ponder - is it just that the singles are so much more familiar to me, or are they really the only sparks of proper greatness present? Am I missing something? Was everything I loved of it a glorious accident?
Time tells, as it always will. Repeated listens reveal the charms of the more subtle compositions without asserting their importance over the moments you really fell head over heels for. It doesn't maintain that consistent brilliance, but the structure of this den was never going to be the most conventional. Things had to be tried - it's the Mystery Jets, after all. This won't be the last den they make. It's well worth a visit, but if the more liberated, joyous elements of this one are explored, it's worth investigating into renting a room in the next one they construct.
Artists in this article: Mystery Jets
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment