Music

Hailing from Eel Pie Island and bred on ’70s prog rock, when the Mystery Jets released their debut album in 2006 its chief appeal was their charming sense of adventure: one part King Crimson, two parts Arthur Ransome. That and the fact Blaine’s dad was in the band, saving them from the air of self-conscious cool pervading much of what we seem to be calling London’s ‘post-Libertines scene’.

Now Henry Harrison has stopped appearing live and the boys, with Erol Alkan in the producer’s chair, have moved from making dens to making passes at girls-next-door, including Laura Marling, who lilts along here with the Motown bass of ‘Young Love’.

There’s a big ’80s-style hit in the waiting in the form of ‘Two Doors Down’, a song constructed, the band readily admit, out of elements of Roxette, Phil Collins, Aztec Camera and Wet Wet Wet. ‘I think I’m in love with a girl hoo-way/I think I’m in love with a girl hoo-wurgh’ wails Blaine while synths twinkle like a discoball through a haze of Charlie Red.

If that’s what it’s like to be 21 these days, we’ll be intrigued to hear daddy Harrison’s solo album, ‘57’.