And finally, in college I called this band “The Flaming Jets” for a couple months because I could never remember their actual name. That is all…

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Zach Lyon: If I were much younger I’d certainly have a tolerance for “Someone Purer”‘s self-deprecating yearning for self-improvement, especially via music. But the problem with being a teenager in love with music is that it takes forever to internalize the fact that your favorite songs were written by grown men who should know better. You might (but probably not) know Mystery Jets as the band responsible for one of the most gorgeous and lovely and delicious choruses of 2008; I was never a fan of the irony inherent in “Two Doors Down” — 80s pastiche is its most tired incarnation — but maybe that’s just what they need to avoid the quicksand pits of sadsack navel-gazing.
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Jonathan Bogart: I know I’m morally deficient because of it, but I prefer my soaring rock songs to have more than a single texture.
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Alfred Soto: For the purportedly simple task of persuading a singer with a Mercer-esque weakness for what used to be called “soaring” melodies to embody literate lyrics about salvation, these boys deserve our thanks. Next time I hope they find a cause less pure to embody.
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Iain Mew: Mystery Jets’ ability to transform themselves with each album is impressive. To date, their incarnations have always been out of time — they were The Coral far too late, they worked with Laura Marling too early and they got on the ’80s yacht-indie bandwagon too early (and possibly with too much subtlety, if Noah and the Whale‘s horrifying success is anything to go by). This time round they sound right on time though, trading in an of-the-moment epic-but-too-scuffed-and-shy-to-actually-be-epic sound which The Maccabees and Bombay Bicycle Club have found commercial success with, and that has made The Shins more popular in the UK now than ever. The Jets actually bring something new and good to it as well, at least in the verses and their creeping discomfort before a disappointingly familiar resolution brought to you by rock ‘n’ roll, “oh” and “oh!”.
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Brad Shoup: “Deliver me from sin/And give me rock and roll” — I’m not sure these concepts have been abutted anywhere outside of a Stryper record. And I’m up to my eyelashes in these kids wringing their hands over their adolescent Narnias. But damn if, when they punch into the chorus, rock and roll doesn’t seem like such a bad solution.
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Anthony Easton: I like the idea that rock ‘n’ roll works as a kind of religious hope — the idea that pleasure, or sexuality, or music can redeem someone, make them a more interesting and less difficult person, a person that does not require the arithmetic of subtracting desire as a response to adding religious purity. This rock ‘n’ roll-as-new-religion seems to be uniquely English, because Americans still haven’t quite gotten over the swamp of Jesus and still feel guilty and still seek innocence; the innocence sought in this work is profoundly ironic.
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