Mystery Jets

Mon 15th Dec, 2008 in Features

“I’ve been trying to get fit – staying off the booze,” admits Kai Fish, bassist for pop darlings Mystery Jets. It’s late night in the UK, as we speak, and I am Kai’s last official band duty for the evening. “Hmmm,” I reply sagely, “Rock and roll is just not rock and roll anymore. Everyone’s on the organic sobu noodles and herbal tea, so they can perform well on stage.”

Kai sighs, tired. “Well, I wish. I wish I could do that. There’s something about being on tour that just makes you drink. You’re just hanging around. You’d rather be busy. Most of the time you’re driving, or doing nothing.”

“And you’re in holiday mode too,” I offer, “Where you just feel like you can.” Giving up all pretence, he concedes that sometimes, “You’ve got to fulfill that band criteria of getting wasted and partying.” Ah, it’s a tough life, dear readers.

After the string of dates these fellows have booked up until 2009, it could well be a long hangover. First up was their UK headline tour during October. Happy to discard the boring topic of beer, Kai is glowing in his appraisal of their chosen support act. Like, really glowing.

“The Golden Silvers – they’re fantastic, just brilliant,” he enthuses, suddenly awake again. Being surprisingly ignorant of new music, I prod for a few more details. He pauses, thinks, and says, “They merge, for me, bits of – œ60s songwriting, – œ70s wig-outs and – œ80s, Prince-y keyboard lines. They’re just great. The singers got this kind of David Byrne thing – his voice is great and the lyrics are fantastic. We took them on tour a little bit earlier on in the year and thought it would be great to have them do our whole headline tour. It’s great for us, because we get to see a good band every night.”

The added bonus of seeing a good band each night didn’t end with that tour. November saw Mystery Jets (Kai, drummer Kapil Trivedi, lead guitarist/percussionist William Rees and man-of-several talents, namely lead vocalist, Blaine Harrison ) doing support honours for The Kooks before, um, jetting over to our fair shores to do a hop-skip tour: Falls Festival, Southbound and couple of headline sideshows in Melbourne and Sydney.

It will be the first time that Aussie crowds have had a listen to new album, Twenty One, in the live setting. “I’ve got a little bit of family over there,” confides Kai. “We’re all, like, really excited to get over there.” I give him the tour guide spiel of how lucky he is to be booked at two festivals in such stunning locations, before remembering we are supposed to be talking about music, and albums, and that.

How have the UK kids been responding to Twenty One? Kai confesses to the age-old muso fear: Second Album Syndrome. “After the first album we wanted to take [our sound] somewhere slightly different and move it on. You take a little bit of a risk because, are your original fan base going to be receptive? But you’ve just got to do it.” And? “I think it’s paid off really well. I’m so happy we just stepped out and just kept developing, kept with our beliefs in moving forward.”

Twenty One was released in March this year and while that doesn’t seem a long time, the truth is that, often, touring the album can inspire a band to, well, write another one. “Is that how you guys have been rolling?” I politely enquire. “We have actually.” He almost sounds surprised that they’ve found the time. “We wanna dive into the next album. We’ve found a much better way of writing, which is quicker and more to the point. We want to go full steam ahead.”

A note to the uneducated: despite Mystery Jets being formed when Blaine was only 12 (his dad Henry Harrison has been a literal founding father of the group, only bowing out of touring duties after the release of their debut, Making Dens ) the band seem happy to own up to the steep learning curve they put themselves on. It may only have been a couple of years since they launched themselves, but there has been much ground covered. So far as songwriting development goes, Kai thinks they’ve crystallised dramatically in between album number one and its rapid follow-up.

“In a way, it just feels like it’s become clear,” he explains. “On the first album, none of us really knew what we were doing. We were really young, like, eighteen years old. Although we’d been playing together a long time, you have so much to learn in terms of songwriting, producing and being in the studio. Before, the writing process on every song was completely different and sporadic. Some songs were taking two months to write whereas now we go off in pairs. Me and Will have done quite a lot together, Blaine and Will, Blaine and Henry. We’re more sure of how we work best now. I think the process has become more refined.”

And that’s only half the job done. Then there’s the live show. “The whole live thing really is another world; it’s got its own set of challenges. Each tour we do we try and shake things up a bit – for us and the fans – you wanna keep it fresh for the people who are coming to see you play.’ I hear the tone of a long day of interviews creep back into his voice.

“The quandary of the set list,’ I muse, “The crowd might think it’s fresh, but you find yourself playing the same show, night after night, when there are new songs you want to run.”

“It’s true, it’s true,” he sighs. “I think that’s a typical band thing. In the band you can get bored in the week but actually, the fans have no idea. You’ve got to clench your fists and go, we’ve just got to do it. I guess that’s the graft of it. You have the fun of writing and recording and then when you tour you’ve just gotta do it.” With that, I declare it time for little Jets to be in bed, Kai agrees he is dreaming of pillows and the promise of a typically rousing Mystery Jets tour in Australia comes forth with a little yawn.

You can see the Mystery Jets wide awake and firing this summer.

30 Dec – Falls Festival, Marion Bay
31 Dec – Falls Festival, Lorne
1 Jan – The Hi-Fi Bar, Melbourne
3 Jan – Southbound Festival
4 Jan – The Metro Theatre, Sydney