Mystery Jets

These were the words, courtesy of Steve Jobs, that kept the English indie rockers motivated while recording their fifth album Curve Of The Earth – a vastly different record in comparison to their first four.

“It’s different for a lot of reasons – mainly because we produced it along with a close friend of ours,” says Rees. “Also because we did it in our own studio, where we had no time constraints and we could work all day and all night, which we often did. The writing approach was quite different, where the songs on this record are very personal and they’re all about personal experiences that we’ve all been through, and the album is like a glance back at the last decade of the life of the band. Every song picks a key experience from that ten-year period and looks at it with fresh eyes and tries to understand it in a new way, and that’s why a lot of the songs are about friendship, memories, apathy in the world, or feeling like you’ve lost your place or your sense of purpose.

“Also, a lot of the songs are about wonder and what’s going on inside people – a collective of people, and not just our own personal limited experiences,” Rees says. “It became a question and a challenge of whether we could write for a collective of people and not just ourselves. I think this album is the first time we tried to deal with bigger topics and bigger questions about life. In that way, I think we tried to do something quite grand – I’m not sure whether we’ve done that, but we tried to.”

Going into this fifth album wouldn’t have been an easy task for the band members, all conscious of hitting the age of 30, and in the aftermath of their last releases Serotonin and Radlands receiving some negative reviews. To give themselves more creative control, Mystery Jets built their own studio and produced the new record themselves, moving away from the dancey Britpop sound that first brought them fame in 2006 with their debut Making Dens.

“We recorded Curve Of The Earth in a disused button factory in North London,” Rees explains. “It was kind of a weird place to do the recording, but we set up our own studio in the process – it was this old button factory that we had to clear out. We were looking at it for a little while, wondering if it was going to be worth it because it was so full of buttons and machines and junk, but eventually we decided to just go for it. We had to clean up thousands and thousands of buttons as well as button machines, which were really heavy, and then take them out of the studio and drive them off to the local dump before we could start making noise in there.”

Curve Of The Earth is perhaps Mystery Jets’ most epic release to date. The album is almost conceptual in the way it runs with themes of belonging, conveying the struggles of trying to grow up – or in some cases failing to grow up – while everyone else manages to do so. In keeping with the grandiose nature of the release, the band recently performed Curve Of The Earth in its entirety at London’s Institute Of Contemporary Arts.

“We came on and played the album from start to finish and then walked off. It was really nerve-wracking; no-one in the audience knew it, and we barely knew how to play it ourselves, and we just kind of dived right in and did it. It was really good to do it in that way, because the album is very much a whole – it’s not really meant to be pulled apart and swapped around; it should be absorbed in its rightful track listing. It was really nice to play it like that,” Rees says.

“I actually saw a few people singing along by the end of some songs, which was really positive. It was quite hard to tell what the audience felt because we were really nervous and I don’t think we have ever played any gigs like that. It was a proper challenge, but I think people saw it for what it was, which was: ‘Here we are, playing these songs for the first time, no-one has seen this before.’ And I think the audience understood and embraced that – the audience stood there listening and taking it in, which was nice.

“As a band, we would like to play more shows in that format, but I think when you travel and play places like Australia then your focus is slightly different – you’re more interested in giving people a slice and taste of everything that the band has done.”

Although Mystery Jets may not be performing Curve Of The Earth in its entirety overseas, fans can rejoice – Rees sounds relatively confident that the band will be hitting up Australian shores in the near future.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll be coming out to Australia in April or May. I’m hoping that we’ll get to Australia a couple of times on this album. I think we’ll definitely come out over Christmas and New Year’s as well for a few festivals then. Nothing’s been confirmed, but I would say to expect us over there soon.”

[Mystery Jets photo by Emma Swann]