Live
< Mystery Jets & Les Incompetents @ Southend Chinnery’s
words by Terry Ince
Loads goes on in Southend nowadays. There’s street fights. football fights, play fights (that amount to real fights) scuffles, scraps, flicks and slaps. Some fool (allegedly) burnt down the pier and every other weekend the town is awash with blue shirted United fans embracing each other in sweat fuelled hugs on the terraces (not in a gay way though, you must understand).
On the other side of town, there are 50 or so music fans. And so, when Mystery Jets bring their crazed Eel Pie Island get up to this neck of the woods, all the faces look sharp and step out. But the Jets haven’t travelled alone. Wisely, strength in numbers has meant that Les Incompetents are along for the ride.
A group of half Dickensian gents / half Dickensian street urchins, ‘Les Inc’, clad in suits, ties and tweed jackets, bring something the Poe faced Chinnery’s crowd have never seen before – humour.
By his own admission, front man Fred resembles a young Woody Allen. But unlike Mr Allen, Fred is actually funny. “Sorry we burnt down your pier,” he confesses as soon as he picks up the mic. The locals are not amused (well, this one is).
But you’ve got to have the tunes and luckily for them, Les Inc do. Skiffles and chiming guitars hint at The Coral and even The Smiths circa ‘Hatful Of Hollow’. Fred and co host William yell back and fourth tales of friendship and love, while assaulting cowbells and tambourines with drumsticks. Theirs is a set of complete sound throughout, the sound of true musicians. So it’s fitting that they should hit the stage before Mystery Jets do.
Minus everybody’s favourite Mystery Jet, Henry, the bands’ average age of twenty makes watching their live show only possible with wide eyes. Blaine especially dazzles with his percussion skills on the opening ‘Zoo Time’; his attention shared with lead vocals as he bashed what looks to be pots, pans and dented crash cymbals. Four part harmonies through ‘Alas Agnes’, meanwhile, manage the impossible task of making Chinnery’s worse than awful PA sound half decent.
But what really tips Mystery Jets as rulers of the Thameside scene, from whence they hail, is the innovation of it all. A comparison to any apparent influence just can’t be made. Mystery Jets are 100% Mystery Jets and with that, they are sure to out live Arctic Monkeys and Kasier Chiefs, ten times over.
When they release their debut album later this year, the Eel Pie men will be separated from the mainland boys and few will be spared.
Originally appeared in volume 1, issue 8 of Loud & Quiet magazine
