Mystery Jets are an English four-piece indie band, formerly based on Eel Pie Island in Twickenham, London
RADLANDS is their 4th album, The album was recorded in Austin, Texas and Streatham, London and was co-produced by Mystery Jets and Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, Emiliana Torrini).
“We’ve always wanted to make a record in America, Our first three albums
were entirely conceived and recorded in London so going out to Austin felt like
the furthest place from everything we knew. We arrived with a handful of songs,
but one in particular felt like it captured the spirit of why we had come there.
It was called Radlands (a fusion of the 1970s Terrence Malick film
‘Badlands’ and Redlands, Keith Richard’s Sussex estate), which is also
what we named our studio; a big old wooden house on the banks of the Colorado
river. 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 back yard to hear us play. Some nights we drove into town to
drink and bring people back to play on the songs. When we arrived home, it was
hard to believe any of it even
happened. It somehow all felt like a strange dream. But when Dan Carey heard it
and invited us down to his studio we listened back to everything and it was all
there, it was real. All we were missing were some gospel singers, which he found
in the Streatham community ladies choir…”