Music
Your new single, 'Young Love', seems to be about a one-night stand. Is that a subject close to the band's heart?
"I think some more than others, I have to say! I don't think I should name any names, but some of us are definitely more experienced at that sort of things than others."
Why did you get Laura Marling involved?
"We've all been big fans of her music for quite a while. We just thought that it would be really cool if she could do it. She gladly came along and did the part and I think she did a good job."
Your new album's called 21. Is there any significance behind that number?
"All the songs are written about being that age. Plus, that age signifies us leaving our childhood behind and slowly becoming men."
How daunting was it to start work on the second album after touring your debut for such a long time?
"Not that much really. There was obviously the 'Sh*t we have to do an album' thing, but I think that's natural when you start over with a new project. We shed a lot of skin and thought 'What can we do that we haven't done before?' We tried to go the right way about doing that."
Were there things you didn't like about your debut that you wanted to rectify this time around?
"Well, doing this album we realised what we were really good at and really enjoyed doing - and we stuck at that. Whereas (debut album) Making Dens was very much us saying, 'Let's see what we can do', this album was a lot more clear and defined. Before doing the album we knew what we wanted to do - we wanted to make ten or eleven really good pop songs. We didn't stop writing until we had those songs and that's why it took us just over a year to do it."
Erol Alkan [DJ and co-founder of Trash nightclub] produced the album for you. What was he like in the studio?
"He's amazing - like a human jukebox. We'd play him a song and he'd play something back that was made in the '70s by some obscure Scottish guy. He'd be like, 'Yeah man, that's what we've got to make this track sound like'. Then we'd say, 'Oh God, these tunes actually sound really similar'. He just goes for the jugular on every song and gets to the heart of it. If the song sounded like an '80s Whitney Houston song, he'd go for it and bring out the keys to make it top-line."
Did you involve him in the record because of his dance background?
"Yeah, I think we wanted to make a massive dance album at first, but only one of the songs has actually ended up being a club song. Most of them are more guitary. Erol's done the dance thing and he wanted to show that there's more to him than that, which there is - he's there with the live stuff and comes to all our gigs in London. He talks to us about how we can improve this and that."
Does it bother you that people see you as a "quirky" band because of everything you did on Eel Pie Island?
"I think it just became the only thing people would write about. They would write about Eel Pie Island and the old guy in the band and totally overlook the music, which was wrong. I think people thought it was a gimmick and it wasn't. It just naturally came about like that."
What are your live plans for the summer?
"I think two years ago there was a joke in Mojo magazine that said: 'All you need for a festival is a field and the number of the Mystery Jets' manager.' I think we said, 'OK maybe we should chill out with all the festivals'. We're going to stop whoring ourselves out so much and be a bit more selective. Hopefully we'll still get to do Glastonbury, Fuji Rock and a few in Spain, which will be great."
Mystery Jets release new single 'Young Love' on March 10. Their album 21 follows on March 24.
