If every track on the Mystery Jets’ second album was as good as Half in Love with Elizabeth, the London quartet’s change of direction might have made sense. As things stand, however, their decision to tighten things up and re-present themselves as an 1980s pop-rock band is hampered by a lack of suitably catchy material and cute arrangements. They start out promisingly, with a flurry of mad synthesizers on Hideaway, and stay in touch with Young Love, thanks to a sultry guest vocal by Laura Marling. Then, after their big moment on Half in Love — a reggae-flavoured ode to amorous indecisiveness, confidently sung by Blaine Harrison and produced by the 1980s veteran Stephen Street — things begin to slide. Only Behind the Bunhouse, which echoes the wistful melancholy of the Smiths, suggests that there is much of a future in the Jets’ desire to roll back the years.

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