So, according to last week’s Sounding Off, DFA 1979’s Sebastien Grainger reckons British guitar music’s currently looking about as healthy as a 48-hour road-trip with Babyshambles. Pronounced dead, apparently, the moment Razorlight’s ‘Up All Night’ failed to single-handedly re-invent Tibetan drill’n’bass. Hmmm… maybe. Or maybe he just hadn’t bothered looking beneath the Radio 1 A-list. Because British guitar music’s never been this packed with genre-leaping ideas. For every Britpop-aping popster out there, there’s someone playing King Crimson records backwards on a knackered synth. And if you don’t believe us, go discover Mystery Jets. They throw weird parties in boat sheds and unleash prog-tinged loon-rock laced with space-age guitars courtesy of lead singer Blaine’s dad. ‘On My Feet’ begins with a thumping backbeat, propelling forward the kind of sounds flying saucers make when they disobey intergalactic speed limits. Then it breaks into an oddly moving barbershop-folk ditty, before suffering a feedback-fronted nervous breakdown and ending up in a sweaty heap, doing some impromptu tribal chanting at the Haçienda. Has British guitar music taken off? It’s currently heading past Venus, looking for strange alien radio signals to feed sideways through an echo pedal.
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