The story surrounding the Mystery Jets dates back to the birth of the band in 2003. Now, 7 albums later and many additions and losses to the line up, they’re now releasing their seventh album, motivated by the ups and downs of political protest and the turbulent last year or two in British politics.

In particular the band reference the climate change protests, which in many parts of the world are still continuing and gathering momentum. The impact these have had to give young people a passion in activism, which for a generation has been powerful has been incredible, and therefore a pretty inspiring topic to dedicate an album to. 

The video to ‘A Billion Heartbeats’ is filled with images of protests and from the first line you feel the passion of the song, asking why it takes such events to get people motivated to be involved in speaking their political mind. The song itself is a mixture of indie and folk, with lots of voices heard to mimic chanting, with organs, guitars and a powerful drum fulfilling the majority of the instrumentation. The power of this song comes from the melody, with some elements reminiscent of Radiohead, particularly their OK Computer phase, but then other sections strike me of Mumford and Sons. 

Whatever you feel, this song is powerful in its origin and has some great songwriting and clever production on the vocals, particularly to showcase the importance of the message that The Mystery Jets want to put out. I feel that many people who partook in the protests, and for that matter many who did not, would approve of this song, it unites and has a real purpose in its creation, with catchy chorus, excellent musicianship and politically accurate and relevant undertones, it’s definitely a winning formula.

 Indie    Alternative 

Author: Phil Arnold

Phil Arnold is a musician, producer and music reviewer from Devon, in the South West of England. Whilst not writing music reviews, Phil also writes and records under the name of Ugbrooke.