Singles for the week starting 16th July!

Mystery Jets
Greatest Hits
(Rough Trade)
*****
It actually makes me want to knee myself in the balls with incomprehension. How did the Mystery Jets’ 2010 album ‘Serotonin’ not devour the charts like Alien acid blood, dissolving the number one spot before continuing to burn a hole in the basement too (say, number 42) just to prove how hard it was?

Or to put that another way, how did an album so loaded with songs designed to orgasmatron the human brain manage to sneak past Radio 1 without much more than a hairball choke? Well, Radio 1? You lose! Because far from losing their nerve, this year’s ‘Radlands’ has shown the Jets on classy form again, with ‘Take Me Where The Roses Grow’ beating the living pants off their earlier Laura Marling collaboration for example.

That one would make a fine single, but in the meantime ‘Greatest Hits’ will definitely bring a bright and goofy smile to your face: essentially it tells the story of a couple breaking up and having to work out who owns what in the record collection. As you’d expect, the debate reveals some touching and amusing details about the love affair that’s dissolving: “No way are you having 'This Nation's Saving Grace' - you only listen to it when your pissed / But when you sober up it's always "Why the fuck are you still listening to Mark. E. Smith?”

The song also manages to get in references to Belle and Sebastian, ABC and Wings (the latter prompting a ‘Jet’-style “Woo-hoooo woo-hoooo”) all the while bouncing along to one of the band’s most spiffing melodies to date. Mystery Jets? I want your man babies.
Ric Rawlins

John Wean
New York Doesn’t Love You
(Self Release)
***
Fairly traditional punk pop here, with a half decent chorus and the Scottish growl of singer Conor Cartwright elevating it just above the fray of everyone else’s traditional punk pop. And nope, there’s nobody in the band called John Wean as far as we know!
Danny Canning