MYSTERY JETS

Serotonin

[Rough Trade]

Mystery Jets singer Blaine Harrison learned about music through his father, Henry, who founded the group, spent years as a touring member and still helps the English quintet with songwriting. The elder Harrison is responsible for—or perhaps to blame for—his son’s love of freaky, frilly progressive rock, an influence the Jets mostly avoid on their third album. On highlights “Too Late to Talk” and “Flash a Hungry Smile,” Blaine Harrison and company make tasteful use of analog synths, using them to set up a harmony-rich folk jam and ’70s pure-pop mood-booster, respectively. Blaine’s pop instincts are impeccable—whether he’s referencing the smeared-black textures of Siouxsie and the Banshees (as on “Waiting on a Miracle”) or the crisper attack of U2, he puts melody first, emotion second and lyrics a distant third. Serotonin is about the kind of love and longing best expressed with clichés. It’s familiar, unforced and, thankfully, not all that progressive. –KP