Album Review: Mystery Jets - Curve Of The Earth

Fearsome imagery of spiders and cancers growing in Telomere create a thematic dread that throbs through the start of Mystery Jets' fifth album. But it's hard to shake the feeling of déjà vu that maybe we've already heard 'maturing' soulful indie kissed by winsome dreams of living in a more psychedelic time. The fact is, we have.

When Supergrass shook free of their Britpop 'oik' caricatures they sounded exactly like this, which isn't a bad thing. The similarities between Blaine Harrison in this environ and Gaz Coombes at the same stage of the 'Grass's career only encourages the constant double-checking of the liner notes, but all this just accentuates the difference between exciting and interesting; between drinking six beers with your mates and having Espresso Martinis on the mezzanine with acquaintances; between having hit records and people chancing upon you in the back pages of Uncut magazine.

Recorded in an abandoned button factory-cum-studio (again, interesting), the record tries hard to possess awe-inspiring atmospherics and the studiophiles will have a field day ticking off the production techniques. 1985 goes all slo-mo while Harrison's vulnerably camp trill counts down to a rocketing end section. Then there's the Pink Floyd influences so obviously brought to a crescendo in Blood Red Balloon's blatant Wish You Were Here riffing. Curve Of The Earth's spectacle works if viewed as a transition piece to wherever Mystery Jets intend to go next, which seems as unclear to them as it is to us.