Mark Heffernan is something of a God Is In The TV favourite, stretching back several years, having featured on a couple of our recent cover compilations as Pocket Lint, and also having made our pages with his old band Remodel.
This new record only makes us love his music even more, a charming, often beguiling, frequently thrilling set that shows exactly why we hold Mark in such high regard.
Heffernan himself says of The Jet Age: “This album evokes the time of new technology, style and media. Recorded using a mix of guitars, synths and 80s drum machines playing Latin-inspired beats, these songs paint a picture of the Jet Age.”
Mostly instrumental, but later spoken word, the gentle poetic vibe of opener ‘Somewhere Among The Clouds‘ draws us in gently before the superb ‘German Messages‘ comes on like a cross between Joy Division, the darker side of Depeche Mode, Suicide and the much-missed noughties Croydon band Hicks Milligan-Prophecy. It’s an absolutely fabulous track, gritty and industrial, and the first moment that lets you know that this record is going to be absolute fire.
The most obvious influence here, probably mostly because of Mark’s voice, is that of The Human League‘s earlier work, especially on the intense, synth driven ‘Jet Set Go‘, or the fantastic ‘Dictatorship Of The Air‘ (honestly, nobody would bat an eyelid if you added this track to Dare as a bonus track) but then you have the impossibly pretty ‘Split Screen Affair‘, a duet between Heffernan and the wonderful Sophie Mahon, which is akin to something that the late, great Terry Hall might have written around the time of The Colour Field, and performed with the equally late, great Kirsty MacColl. The Motown-like string backing only enhances it, which makes it a standout in an album that is packed full of them.
The trippier ‘E28/39‘ is more like the mid-eighties version of Phil Oakey‘s aforementioned band, though the lyrics here, and the delivery of them, is evocative of some of those great earlier album tracks or B-sides by The Smiths.
At times tender, with a lilting groove, such as on ‘Pin Up Queen‘, and at other times fierce and almost punk-ish at the end of ‘Comet‘, The Jet Age always grabs your attention, as capable of making you swoon (see ‘Cary On/Cary Off‘ – and no, I don’t know why it’s missing the other ‘r’ without asking Mark, though it doesn’t really matter) as it is of making you feel like you’re on the verge of a goth apocalypse (‘Vampires And Vixens‘). As a result, the record is up there with the best of the year.
My only criticism is that ‘The Ballad Of The Jet Age‘ feels like a perfect closing track with its repeated line “romantic travels, dead and gone, it’s in the grave with O’Leary“, hard-hitting, and a great way to leave us to reflect on what we’ve just heard. It’s one of those “Whoa!” kind of moments, but then ‘Stranded‘ comes in, which is a decent track and all that, but it kind of detracts from the impact of what I feel should have been the curtain closer.
It’s a minor quibble, mind, and the truth is, The Jet Age is just a sublime record, easily top ten of the year material. Don’t let it pass you by.
