Mystery Jets
A Billion Heartbeats

THE REVIEW

With "Curve Of The Earth," the Mystery Jets had pulled off a sensational comeback, crafting their most adventurous album to date.

It might have seemed like the pinnacle of a great career, which began as NME darlings (yet another) in the mid-2000s; instead, the five Londoners surprise again with this new "A Billion Heartbeats," co-produced by the band itself along with Matthew Twaites from Electric Soft Parade (confirmed by the previous studio episode).

However, this new work wasn’t born under a lucky star: first, an emergency surgery for an infection occurred to frontman Blaine Harrison, then the Covid-19 emergency seemed to have definitively crippled the project's release, which from the end of 2019 was finally published on April 3, 2020. And thankfully so.

"A Billion Heartbeats" is a stunning album. It shifts little from what Mystery Jets have recently done, adding just here and there a newfound taste for much rawer and more decided guitars than usual, such as in the opening dyad "Screwdriver" / “Petty Drone” and in the finale of the crucial single "Hospital Radio," a devastating portrayal of life from the perspective of a patient hospitalized.

The inspiration and writing never wane this time, allowing the guys to craft an album inspired from start to finish, loaded with beautiful melodies, spot-on lyrics, and choruses to be memorized after half a listen: notably the driving "History Has Its Eyes On You," the Keane-like "Cenotaph," and the masterpiece "Campfire Song," along with the irresistible crescendo of the concluding "Wrong Side Of The Tracks." Lyrically, the themes addressed are tantalizingly timely (NHS, extremism, the death of Scott Hutchison), completing a truly perfect picture.

The Mystery Jets reaffirm themselves and aim to stand out in an increasingly saturated and indistinguishable genre landscape.

Best Track: Campfire Song