Mystery Jets are streaming their new album ‘Radlands’ online a week ahead of its official release (April 30) – scroll down to the bottom of the page and click to listen to the album in full.
The album, the band’s fourth, was produced by Dan Carey and will be released via Rough Trade Records. It was mostly recorded in Austin, Texas last summer before being completed earlier this year in south London.
The band had previously said that they opted to record the album in “the furthest place from everything we knew” and that they had actually borrowed all their equipment from Radlands studio to make the album.
Singer Blaine Harrison said: “All we brought on the plane were the guitars on our backs, so we ended up borrowing all this amazing valve gear from an old guy called Jack who ran a little studio up in the hills – which is why the songs sound the way they do. In the daytime we wrote lyrics on the porch and in the evenings a family of deer would gather in the backyard to hear us play.”
Speaking to NME about the album, the band revealed that second track ‘You Had Me At Hello’ tells the story of a character called Lonestar Emerson, who “goes to Nevada and falls in love with a prostitute”, which Harrison protests “didn’t happen to me”.
The album will be the band’s last with bassist Kai Fish, who left earlier this year. Speaking about the departure, Harrison commented: “We’re Mystery Jets MK III. It’s a new era, it’s a new band. That’s what it has to be.”
The tracklisting for ‘Radlands’ is as follows:
‘Radlands’
‘You Had Me At Hello’
‘Someone Purer’
‘The Ballad Of Emerson Lonestar’
‘Greatest Hits’
‘The Hale Bop’
‘The Nothing
‘Take Me Where The Roses Grow’
‘Sister Everett’
‘Lost In Austin’
‘Luminescense’
Mystery Jets – ‘Radlands’, First Listen
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/?bctid=844502797001