The Mysterious West

Always seen as one of the more quirky and intriguing musical prospects on the British indie landscape, Mystery Jets have delivered yet another curious curveball in the way of Radlands, their soundtrack to the dusty roads of the USA. Led by the partnered vocals of co-frontman Harrison and his long-time bandmate and friend William Rees, the quartet have channelled their experiences into a warm and expansive album that all but puts you on the adjacent bar stool. And unsurprisingly, the band is buying.

Enjoying a break from touring at his London home while the Olympics take place around him, Harrison coyly admits that although he didn't expect to, he's quickly warmed to the sports-driven hyperbole that comes with the world's largest spectacle.

“I'm not really a big sports fan or anything like that, but I was surprised by the ceremony; it was quite good,” Harrison confesses. “I think a lot of Londoners were surprised. I feel weird saying it but I'm interested in the Olympics. I didn't think I would be at all. It's always seemed to me that everyone in London has been paranoid about being nationalistic. It's strange, you go somewhere like America and no one thinks twice about having the stars and stripes hanging off their houses, but here there's almost a certain shame about being nationalistic, but that has kind of all disappeared during the Olympics. It's all quite twee, waving the Union Jack around.”

It's funny that Harrison mentions the word “twee”. It's a term that Mystery Jets have at times bordered on. But their sentimental nature seems rooted in honesty, life experience, learning and loving. This is more apparent than ever before on Radlands. Through the fictional character Emmerson Lonestar, the record documents the plundering lifestyle of a desert troubadour, managing to mix idealistic American nature with rogue English sharps in arguably their most cohesive body of work.

“It's always important for us with albums, that from start to finish they immerse you in something and they take you… not necessarily on a journey, but they suck you into a world and spit you back out half an hour later,” Harrison states. “I think with Radlands we felt like we definitely wanted it to be one of those kinds of records. It wasn't an album built around singles, which we have done in the past; I think it's sort of based on America, which is something we basically got from a comic book we wrote to accompany the record, and that very much influenced the themes on the album. It very loosely follows this narrative, which is essentially this three-part modern western. You can order it online and read it, and it's very much an accompaniment to the record.”

So, is this Mystery Jets' take on a concept album?

“In a sense it is,” he remarks. “I don't think we set out to make a concept record, but when we came back [home] we realised that it was such a separate reality to being back in London that we needed to bottle it as something. This character Lonestar came out and the story plays out around him, and a book was just the next logical thing. The first part is already out and the second two parts will be coming out in the autumn and around Christmas as a graphic novel.”

To record the album, the band removed themselves from their safe haven of Eel Pie Island on the Thames and threw themselves into the beating core of America – Austin, Texas. It was a decision, Harrison admits, that made sense after their third record Serotonin. However, as much as the vibrant city lent itself to be a somewhat obvious choice, it took differing desires in regards to a recording location to land the band on the banks of the Colorado River.

“In a way it could have been anywhere. We've always made our records in London and it's so easy to get wrapped up in our own world over here. I think going away somewhere where we were away from all our friends, I think that's what we knew we needed to do; and live in a house together, which we've never done before,” he explains. “But in terms of why America and why Austin – I remember that I really wanted to go to LA and make a real '70s kind of Neil Young sort of record, and then a couple of the guys wanted to go to New Orleans and be a part of those all-night street parties where soul bands play on the stoops – so Austin was a compromise because it was roughly halfway between the two. But just being there in the past for SXSW, it really is a special place and it's a very freethinking and liberal city and I think it was the right place to go.

“Texas is, in many ways, the heartland of America,” he continues, “and it's insane how much they love their country over there. But Austin is kind of like this little blue dot in this big red square; Austin's actually a very cultured town and there's lots of interesting young people doing cool things in the technological world – IBM moved there, for example – [so] it has a real identity in that sense. But you can also see all the old bluegrass and bar bands just playing on little stages to people who still dress like cowboys.”

Since the British rock'n'roll explosion of the '60s, America has always stood to be somewhat of a musical frontier country. Fifty years on, and that romanticism still remains. Mystery Jets arrived with wide-eyes and dreams, and they departed, thankfully, with much of the same.

“It's such a huge place and just touching on that, I dunno, you could write a whole series of records on it,” Harrison muses. “And it definitely bought something out in us just in terms of writing together. We really connected. Like, we were all reading the same books and it was just an exploration of our imagination, I think, because part of Radlands is a fantasy; it's partly based on the world that we found out there and perhaps the world that we wanted to find out there, which was things we'd seen in films and all this imagery that comes from Hollywood.

“I've always found that feeling like a fish out of water is conducive to songwriting,” he concludes. “I think being a stranger somewhere is always a good perspective to write from, and it's not hard to feel like a stranger in Texas, so it was very fruitful for us. And there are still songs [left over] that didn't make it onto Radlands and songs that have just come up since then, so I think in terms of the music being an exploration of that culture and that imagery, I think there is going to be more coming.”

The Mystery Jets will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 20 September - Capitol, Perth WA
Saturday 22 September - Fat As Butter, Newcastle NSW
Sunday 23 September - Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
Tuesday 25 September - The Hi-Fi, Brisbane QLD
Wednesday 26 September - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC