A disclaimer part one: I am not going to lie in the following words. There’s no point.
A disclaimer part two: The first time I’d ever heard of Mystery Jets was on July 12th 2019 when I included the track “Hospital Radio” on these pages.
A disclaimer part three – its linked to part two: My knowledge of “indie” music is sketchy. I’d always liked Oasis, and Biffy Clyro, but basically if I hadn’t been to a DMAS gig in Leicester that I shouldn’t have even gone to (long story) I wouldn’t have even thought about this.
A disclaimer part four: given all the above – although I liked “A Billion Heartbeats” a lot, I wasn’t going to review it.
But then.
Well then, I read a hatchet job on it in the Guardian.
It wasn’t that the fella that wrote it isn’t entitled to his opinion. I don’t waste time reviewing records I don’t like, but if you want to, crack on.
It wasn’t even the withering put down that “Mystery Jets are like The Kooks without the edge”. I don’t know The Kooks either beyond one of their parents was my lecturer when I was at Uni as a mature student in the mid 2000s.
It was the fact that the lyrics were attacked as “woke”. The lyrics are fabulous. Even that though, is opinion. Its just that I detest people that use “woke” as an insult. Generally speaking, they are the type of right-wing reactionary, who calls themselves a “classical liberal”, talks about “free speech” and has a Union Jack in their Twitter bio.
No, this record deserved better than that.
Because for one thing it is hugely ambitious. “Screwdriver”, which merrily attacks the alt-right for “desecrating the national flag” and still manages to sound arena shaking is a wonderful opener, it really is.
And think on this: “fight them with love,” goes its hook line. “Cos when the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will be ours.” Woke? Piss off, pal. I am 44 years old. I know right and wrong, and that’s right.
Kapil Trivedi’s drums anchor down “Pretty Drone”, and its 60s flavoured sounds, while there is something pulsing through “History Has It’s Eyes On You” as William Rees, the band’s former guitarist (he left after the album was recorded) showed his versatility. This one was attacked in that barmy review too, by the way. It offers support to women’s rights and was met with sneering, it probably says more about the author. Either way, Blaine Harrison’s keyboards offer real depth here.
The title track, as much as the opener, was the one that grabbed me when I was debating whether I could do this justice or not. I said I was a Biffy fan, and that’s what the chorus recalled to me.
“Endless City” is much more sparse, even fragile and they are not shy of doing lengthy tracks either. There’s a touch of US college sounds in the 90s about the aforementioned “….Radio” dedicated to the staff that nurse Blaine Harrison through his Spina Bifida and “Cenotaph”, with its understated and beguiling guitar, is another that does something just a little epic.
If this record has a mission statement then it’s in “Campfire Song” and it’s here as the acoustic riff builds and chops: “Twenty years of education and still/No one taught us how to love ourselves until/We danced in the corner of an English field/Then in the morning all of our fates were sealed.” Anyone who has ever lives their life through the lyrics of a song, or found themselves in music will get it. Still, much easier to glibly say “woke” and move on to the next, I guess.
“Watching Yourself Slowly Disappear” is built around its eerie, windswept and almost folky feel, and “Wong Side Of The Tracks” dedicated to Greta Thunberg and designed, surely to inspire those who “were not like the other kids”. And the chorus, by the way, has a real soundtrack flavour. The credits are almost rolling here.
“A Billion Heartbeats” should have been released last year but Blaine Harrison was ill again, and now of course it has seen the light of day with the world on pause. This is misfortune, of course, but it is a record that you suspect will last the test of time and these testing times.
On its release Harrison tweeted this: “If albums are our children, this little one had a complicated birth and will probably need some NLP when it grows up. But maybe the best ones do”. He’s right too. That therapy is stitched into the cathartic fabric here.
That’s why “A Billion Heartbeats” deserves more mature discussion – if you don’t like it that’s cool – just don’t be a dick about it.
Rating 8.5/10
