Mystery Jets frontman Blaine Harrison tells Tim Hughes why they had to fly half-way around the world to the wide open spaces of Texas to truly find themselves as a band

THERE aren’t many places less like inner London than the wide open spaces of Texas. So when Mystery Jets decided they needed fresh inspiration, they knew where to go.

“We had always wanted to make a record in America and this felt like the perfect time to do it,” says frontman Blaine Harrison.

“Texas seemed like the furthest removed environment from living in London, which is very crowded and with little space to think let alone record an album. Texas has space and we wanted that to come through in our music.”

They knew it was going to be an interesting trip, even before they arrived. The band’s Will Rees found himself sat beside a Mormon missionary who proceeded to try and convert him. At length.

Needless to say the experience is recorded in the album and an accompanying comic book - filled with the characters encountered on their way out west.

It has been eight years since we first heard of the Mystery Jets – an anarchic group from Eel Pie Island, out in the Thames in west London, initially consisting of former Steventon lad Blaine, school pal Will and Blaine’s dad Henry. Even with the addition of fellow islander Kai Fish (since left) and drummer Kapil Trivedi they were nothing like the average band, the public being fascinated by the enigmatic figure of Blaine, who was born with spina bifida, and the presence of his guitarist father.

The band’s psychedelic prog-rock was born out of jam sessions at their Eel Pie Island boat shed and attracted a cult following. The release of breakthrough hit single The Boy Who Ran Away put them on Top of the Pops, and was followed by debut Making Dens.

Second album Twenty One, with its hit Two Doors Down, saw the band, now with Henry in a background role, moving in a more pop direction, which continued with next LP Serotonin.

All that was changed by Texas.

Flying to Austin, the band soaked up the rich mix of blues, rock and country, but more often than not, shut themselves away to record.

“We were mostly locked up, going crazy,” says Blaine.

“After the past three records we felt we needed to make things dangerous again. We had made a couple of records that were heavy with pop singles, and we toured them as a pop band. It was fun, but we wanted the new record to work in a very different way.”

They recorded in an old wooden house on the banks of the Colorado River. They called the place, and the album, Radlands, a combination of the 1970s Terrence Malick film Badlands and Keith Richard’s Sussex estate Redlands.

Blaine says: “All we brought were the guitars on our backs, so we ended up borrowing some amazing valve gear from an old guy called Jack who ran a little studio up in the hills. In the daytime we wrote lyrics on the porch and some nights we drove into town to drink and bring people back to play on the songs.

“We didn’t make things easy for ourselves by going out with a producer, though, and by the time we came home we couldn’t figure out whether we had a record. It was a case of not being able to see the wood from the trees. But after two or three weeks tightening it up we realised we did.

“In many ways it’s a concept album,” he goes on. “There’s a narrative through it and the comic book we’ve written glues all the characters together and brings them to life. We are telling tales and creating a world for them to live in. Writing songs is like writing little film scripts; there are elements of fiction but also real experiences of what happened.

“It is very much an American-themed record,” he goes on. “And that is reflected in the show. I wanted big blow-up cacti but that didn’t fit in the budget. However, we do have someone behind the stage with a smoke machine, tumble weeds and a setting sun. “We’ve also got a fantastic backdrop with a desert-scape and all these wonderful flying birds.”

Blaine is proud of the band’s achievements since its organic birth. “Our fanbase has changed with every record,” he says. “There is a top layer of people who come and go, but the hardcore remain.

“We started a long time ago. A lot of bands have faded away and we’ve been in danger of crumbling too, but we’ve held ourselves together. We are still a band of brothers. It’s like a marriage; it may not last for ever, but it’s good while it does.”

Mystery Jets play the O2 Academy Oxford on Sunday. Tickets from ticketweb.co.uk Radlands is out now. The comic book, Radlands – The Ballad of Emmerson Lonestar, featuring covers by artist Glenn Fabry, was released with a limited edition double-vinyl album.