Finding glimpses of joy is very much the theme of Mystery Jets’ seventh album, A Hole to See the Sky Through. Across – for example – the title track, and ‘Godrays’, the indie stalwarts sing of “seeing a rainbow through the thunder” and someone who’ll “clear a hole to see the sky through”. The irony is that listening to A Hole to See the Sky Through often feels like a similar exercise: searching patiently for fleeting flashes of excitement.
Predecessor A Billion Heartbeats felt urgent, spiky, and politically-charged. It was a record that crackled with purpose, sounding worlds away from the sugary exuberance of 2008’s Two Doors Down. A Hole to See the Sky Through never quite matches the urgency of the former or the charm of the latter, often content to drift into…