Time to take another ride on the Mystery Jets train

Blaine Harrison takes a deep breath and sighs. He takes another deep breath. He pauses.

“The way I’ve always looked at it,” he says, “has been as a train going through this ever-changing landscape . . . ” He trails off. It can be tricky summing up the past 11 years of your life into one succinct, locomotive-related analogy.

“There will be times when people get on and they share the ride with you, and they might ride it for a couple of stops and then get off,” he tries again, gathering steam. “There are other passengers that will get on and they’ll ride it ’til the very end; and other people might get on, look out the window and say, ‘Oh, this isn’t the way I want to go – it’s the wrong direction’, and they’ll get off and get a train going the other way. And I’m absolutely fine with that.”

It's a correlation that's particularly befitting of Harrison's band, Mystery Jets. The London five-piece might not be your favourite band of all time, but they make albums that are consistently worth listening to. Having dipped their toes into zippy prog-pop on Making Dens and Twenty One, their new record (their fifth studio album) comes after 2012's Radlands, which was recorded on a desolate ranch in Texas and based around a semi-fictional character called Emmerson Lonestar. Curve of the Earth, despite its title and interstellar artwork, is somewhat grounded to its predecessor. That's partly due to the band finding a former button factory across the road from Harrison's home in east London to call a base.

Creativity

“It’s really nice to have the opportunity to get behind the microphone whenever creativity strikes,” Harrison says.

“If the muse comes to visit you in the night, it’s a very short walk to the mixing desk. I’ve always kind of had some sort of studio wherever I live, but I think the different thing about this is that it’s very much been built by everyone in the band.

“We’ve all become producers, really. I was always quite cynical about a record being produced in a democratic way, but it somehow worked. There were so many twists and turns and junctures, and everyone was essential.”

Having physical access to the collection of gear they have amassed also helped.

“Inevitably, [all of the gear] found its way on to the record, which probably partly accounts for the density and the sound. There was an initial record that went through a culling process, and a lot of those songs have been thrown back on to the scrapheap, probably to be torn apart for future songs.”

Their newfound sense of democracy was born out of two significant events. Founding member and bassist Kai Fish left the band, and they found themselves without management or a publishing deal. New member bassist Jack Flanagan was drafted in and they signed a new deal with Caroline International.

"I think when we came back from America, we sort of had this feeling of 'We can kind of do whatever we want'," says Harrison. "My impression, after touring Radlands, was that guitar music was pretty much really dead in the UK. It's certainly not played on the radio in any meaningful way. I felt like we rediscovered the island mentality that we had when we just started out, that we were in our own world and we don't have to abide by anyone else's rules.

“Not having a record label to put that pressure on us just really gave us the freedom to make the album we wanted to make and take as long as we needed to make it. In this case, it was two years but I think we were all pretty resolved on the idea of not stopping until we all knew that it was done in our hearts.”

Enriching process

Flanagan, a bundle of energy and brightly-coloured hair, made an impact as did Harrison’s external work, providing vocals to a song by French electro-rockers The Shoes.

“When other worlds like that do collide with ours, I think it’s always an enriching process. Even working like that, in the capacity of being a vocalist on someone else’s songs, I really experienced things from the other side of the glass. I think that process is definitely something that will inform my work with the band,” Harrison says.

“In terms of Jack, it made a huge difference. There was definitely a Kai-shaped hole, but we felt it was very important to rediscover that gang feeling and meeting Jack happened at just the right time. It feels like a new band.”

Harrison turned 30 earlier this year, which has seeped into the lyrics, as has the influence of American counterculture/tech visionary author Stewart Brand.

“You spend a lot of your 20s having your first wicked and wild experiences, then a lot of people get to 30 and there’s this slight sigh of relief, because you’ve been through the grinder a couple of times and it’s your first chance to have some sort of distance from it. I think as a songwriter, that’s a really good perspective to write from, because you can sort of start to put your memories into boxes, and that’s always a good way to start writing songs,” he says.

There has also been an adjustment to the musical touchpoints on Curve of the Earth. While the stalwarts of Pink Floyd, David Bowie and King Crimson will always be audible in some way, Harrison says the band is now less flagrant in its pilfering of sounds and styles.

Cultural touchstones

“I think when we started out, we sounded very much like a melting pot of our influences – and we wore our influences very proudly on our sleeves, almost like wearing your colours. But as time goes on, I actually feel that records have less and less of an influence on the actual writing process,” he says.

“Actual influence comes more from other places like films and books – I feel that’s more where my cultural touchstones are. It perhaps operates more on a subconscious level, where there are songs and sounds that are reminiscent of other records. They’re maybe passed through our subconscious realms.”

He’s off on another quasi-philosophical ramble, briefly returning to the idea of the train he began with.

“There are bands that have been the soundtrack to a very important period of my life,” he says, smiling. “That doesn’t mean they need to be part of my life forever, but I’ve shared a moment with them. I think the nature of having a fanbase is a very transitional thing and ultimately it’s out of our control whether history will remember the Mystery Jets. But . . . well . . . I suppose all we can really do is just crack on and write some tunes.”

Curve of the Earth is out next week. Mystery Jets play Whelan's, Dublin, on Feb 12