There’s no two ways about it. 2006 is shaping up to be an amazingly good year for British music.

Only 4 years ago, the NME’s cover pages were graced with the likes of Limp Bizkit and God awful pigeon sniffers Slipknot. Whilst the scribes at the time wrote excitedly about such bands declaring their arrival as the blasting away of Britpop’s cobwebs, there was always an air of resignation and collusion -  a hushed ‘Sorry, but this is the best that we have to offer right now. Our hands were forced’

This year however, we are really spoiled for choice. After 20 years in the wilderness of celibacy, Morrissey has finally learned that, yes, beating your meat is murder, and he has finally given in to lust. Subsequently the theme of love informs much of April’s return to form album ‘Ringleader of the Tormentors’ alongside other such Morrissey staples as God and Death.

April also sees the debut offering from Carl Barat’s new band Dirty Pretty Things, in which he rightfully reclaims his place as the true heir to the Libertines’ crown, now that the only law Pete Doherty seems capable of obeying is that one regarding diminishing returns.

And it is only in such a musical climate that a band like The Mystery Jets can prosper. Originally seen as a curio, the main talking point was the fact that singer Blaine Harrison’s 55 year old father was the band’s second guitarist. The last time such unabashed nepotism was pulled off, Lieutenant Pigeon was perched inelegantly at the No.1 spot performing  ‘Mouldy old dough’ on Top of the Pops with his Mother on piano. This however was back in that decade of sartorial inelegance the 1970’s – a decade where the matching of a donkey jacket with a pair of monkey boots would be greeted with serious nods of approval on the dancefloor. Back then the signature of true style was ownership of a top hat made out of milk bottle tops. And it is from this garish decade that the Mystery Jets take their cue.

Musically, the 70’s weren’t all bad. Summer and Moroder scratched out a blueprint for an alternative future that didn’t involve anvil heavy drums and fat hairy men in tight denim.

Joy Division’s Steven Morris looped the sounds of dying industry and compression chambers as a backdrop to Ian Curtis’ prescient death scrawls. 

And a purple obsessed homunculus with a pencil thin moustache was busy redefining the phrase ‘musical eclecticism’ in Minneapolis.

But in the universe that the Mystery Jets inhabit, such innovators may well have never existed and the work of these pioneers is summarily disregarded. From their early live shows, the intimation was that the Mystery Jets’ Tardis was permanently mired in 1972. Last year’s debut single ‘Zoo Time’ further validated this claim, suggesting that a pentangle had been drawn and the ugly ghosts of King Crimson and Yes had been summoned. It was one of the oddest debut singles since The Coral stupefied the masses with ‘Skeleton Key’ and a career supporting Circulus until the end of time seemed inevitable. Thankfully ‘Zoo Time’ was a minor blip, and as with The Coral, a pop core is slowly revealed.

The album opens with second single ‘You can’t fool me Dennis’ which at once sounds like The Jam at their most urgent and Supergrass at their most affably breezy. It is quickly followed by a brace of songs that recall Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Smiths and XTC. The lingering threat of ‘Prog Rock’ soon vaporizes.

By the midpoint of the album, the group have embraced musical styles wholly unexpected of them. Recent single ‘The boy who ran away’ bears testament to this. A harrowing tale of guitarist Henry Harrison’s abuse as a child at Boarding school in the 1950s, it is set to a musical backbone that is brazen with funk.

Such a disparate pairing of subject matter and song style shouldn’t work and could only jar, yet it doesn’t. The Theatre-land equivalent would be for Mel Brooks to pull off ‘Twin Towers: The Musical’ to great critical acclaim.

What can never be said about The Mystery Jets is that they sound samey. Part of the fun of this album is trying to second guess the musical paths that they will take you down, and there is joy around every corner.

The hymnal intro to ‘Horse drawn cart’ is Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The sound of silence’ developing a partial vacuum and imploding in on itself. And with the titular final track, one can’t help but envisage the sinister cellos from Sergeant Pepper, hijacking a time machine and plotting a course for Eel Pie Island 2005. And at just under 7 minutes long, it never once outstays its welcome.

The only disappointment is the aforementioned ‘Zoo Time’ as it is the only song on the album to justify the constant accusations of prog leveled at the group. With its Antediluvian instrumentation and lazy chorus of ‘Zoo Time!’ chanted ad nauseum, seemingly by ticketless Arthurian Knights trying to gatecrash a jousting, it simply doesn’t belong here.

As a whole, ‘Making Dens’ is a sprawling labyrinthine concoction that far outclasses the overhyped debut of one trick ponies, The Arctic Monkeys.

For the Arctic Monkeys theirs is a limited future as they can only mine their secondhand tales of townie antics for so long (possible song titles for album #4: ‘I went to my Uncle’s and he wasn’t in’ and future live favorite ‘When I got home, it were the wrong video!’)

But for Blaine Harrison and crew, the sky’s the limit. With their oddball leanings, unusual line up and magical way with a song, it’s hard not to be smitten with The Mystery Jets. With a few canny moves (a re-release of ‘Dennis’, surely) and the kind of blanket coverage afforded to lesser bands, 2006 should be theirs for the taking. And with Henry Harrison fast approaching pensionable age, best enjoy them in their current incarnation whilst you still can.

9 out of 10

Ash Barua