Mystery Jets have seemed to always be on the cusp of something-- it's a story so built for a "Where Are They Now?"-themed future issue of MOJO. The UK pop-rockers emerged in 2006 with obscure upbringings (the holy-shit-is-that-a-real-place Eel Pie Island), a strange lineup (one of their guitarists, Henry Harrison, is the 60-year-old father of lead singer Blaine Harrison), and an exuberant, prog-leaning debut, Making Dens. 2008's tepid follow-up, Twenty One, found the Jets with a minor hit on their hands, the polite Cars hat tip "Two Doors Down", but the milquetoast, mid-tempo material it accompanied lacked the inventiveness and general freewheeling fun of their first effort.
The expected thing for Mystery Jets to do on their third album and first for Rough Trade, Serotonin, would be to head back to the well and come up with the zonked-out psych-pop epic that bands like the Coral wish they dreamed of. Thing is, the band's taken a more surprising route instead, choosing to go 100% all-out pop and drafting veteran producer Chris Thomas along for the chart-chasing ride. Even weirder: The gamble works. Serotonin is brimming with bedazzled, champagne-light hooks. Almost every cut kicks through the door with an arena-ready riff, and the one "slow" song of the bunch, the epic-sounding might-be-a-love-letter-to-a-cookie "Lorna Doone", fittingly brings the record to a close. It's the kind of record the Killers would make, if they were still any good at what they do.
Hooks and choruses aren't exactly a new look for the Jets; indeed, the staying power of Making Dens was due to its deft embedding of sticky-sweet melodies alongside touches of post-Pink Floyd weirdness. On Serotonin, the influence is more pub-ready than pill-reliant-- think 1970s glam and early-80s MOR. The rocket-power [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| ed riffs of "Flash a Hungry Smile" dissolve into a whistle-laden melody; lead single "Dreaming of Another World" perpetually builds into the same disco-ball chorus that comes off as both predictable and pleasantly surprising with every listen. There's a breakdown on album midpoint "Show Me the Light" that's so Manfred Mann-worthy, you can practically hear the ghosts of rhythmic handclapping.
The sole noticeable drawback to Serotonin is the lyrics, which get a little WTF-worthy at times ("So here we are in the dark/ Don't the day feel like a waterpark"). As a lyricist, Harrison's better when he keeps it simple (see: the variations on the titular theme of "The Girl Is Gone", the sappy sentiments of "Melt"). When he aims for "deep," as on opener "Alice Springs" ("Freedom is an illusion/ Generated by your brain") or "It's Too Late to Talk" ("No matter how hard you try/ You couldn't hide from the kick inside"), the results sound like dorm-room talk. Luckily, you don't have to write genius lyrics to make reliable, stadium-ready rock. The tics of weirdness that made this band so initially affable may be gone, but they're now a cut-rate pop act instead. Nothing wrong with that.
