The Mystery Jets are a young British band who include the 55-year-old father of their keyboardist and singer, Blaine Harrison, in their line-up. The disparate group of friends who listened to too much Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd while holed-up on Eel Pie Island - an outpost on the Thames that's been called "bohemian" since the Rolling Stones played there back in 1963 - play a pots-and-pans drum kit on stage. The stories about them are better known than their songs.
As a band with more strands of strangeness and attention-grabbing antics than their contemporaries can muster collectively, the Mystery Jets' debut album, Making Dens, comes as a bit of a surprise. Pushing aside the Monty Python-esque collage of voices and vaudeville-inspired piano of Introduction, they plunge into determined indie-pop, stirring melodies guiding them through the rough terrain of each eccentric song.
The mood of You Can't Fool Dennis chops and changes like the affections of a capricious teenage girl. Harry Harrison's lead guitar buzzes maliciously and stumbles absent-mindedly through a maze of hand-claps, tambourine, winsome melancholy and giddy sing-alongs. The feelgood, anything-goes mood remains through the globe-trotting psychedelia of Purple Prose, complete with church bells and impish harmonies that entice you into a tangled web of enthusiasm and fevered imagination that even the faint feeling of motion sickness can't spoil.
The words are randomly poetic rather than significant, in keeping with the band's buoyant - but frustrating - spirit of adventure. The Boy Who Ran Away has crowds of people in Waterloo, but no sunset and little explanation of events. The small tale of the indefinable Alas Agnes is swamped by the grandness of the rolling drums and choral sighs.
But then the dam of good sense holding back the prog rock breaks and drowns the fun. The bawdy oompah-oompah chants of Zootime give way to frenzied percussion and spacey keyboards; it couldn't be more dated and lumpen if it came with Jean Michel Jarre-choreographed lasers. The overblown title track is full of cliffhangers that promise much and deliver mundanity. A couple of blink-and-you'll-miss-them instrumentals add little.
The slide into stolid prog comes just as the band discovers a lyrical focus, leaving the sour taste of missed opportunity. Little Bag of Hair, detailing Blaine Harrison's memories of a childhood spent in hospital, bodes well for the Mystery Jets' future. But for now, their oddities are often more interesting than their music.
