Mystery Jets – ‘Serotonin’

There’s an awful lot expected of Mystery Jets following the flawless Twenty One in 2008 but it’s always going to an arduous task to surpass such a great album, isn’t it? Unfortunately Serotonin doesn’t live up to this expectation, failing to match their last album. It’s not a bad effort by any stretch of the imagination but you can’t help feeling a little bit short change because they can do better.

The major problem is the schism of standards between songs leading to a fairly disjointed listen, the rather pedestrian ‘Too Late to Talk’ and ‘The Girl is Gone’ lack the panache, eccentricity and peculiarity which made them stand out from a largely bland ‘indie’ scene in the first place. Their return heralds a more majestic, poppy and polished approach which avoids risks at all costs, remarkably abandoning the very thing that earmarked them in the first place.

There is plenty here to keep fans happy; the wonderful whistle-along ‘Flash A Hungry Smile’, memorable ‘Lady Grey’ and the shimmering ‘Dreaming of Another World’ are definite high points but it  just compounds what we knew already, they can do better than this.

Mystery Jets – Flash a Hungry Smile

Mystery Jets – Serotonin

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