Jack Flanagan of Mystery Jets announces debut solo album

Mystery Jets bassist Jack Flanagan has announced his debut album – you can hear the first single from it below.

‘Rides the Sky’ will be released via Modern Sky on June 10. It is the first full-length foray into solo singer-songwriting for the seasoned Londoner, although the songs that comprise the album have come together over the course of the past decade. The first track from it, ‘Skyhorse x Skyhorse’, is out now, along with an accompanying black-and-white video. 

“Skyhorse x Skyhorse was born in a shed in somebody else’s back garden in north London,” said Flanagan in a press release. “It began as 8 different songs and after half a year of experimentation it eventually became one. I wanted to try and construct a song that took you to as many different places as possible within three minutes. I think it does.”

The psych-tinged track is one of 12 on ‘Jack Rides the Sky’. Flanagan joined Mystery Jets in January 2014, as a replacement for longtime bassist Kai Fish. Before that, he cut his teeth in a number of London scene bands, with a number of complications forcing a solo career onto the back burner until now, with the aforementioned press release referencing “fate’s interventions” and “his own insecurities”, as well as the death in 2014 of one of Flanagan’s early collaborators, The Holloways’ Rob Skipper.

Mystery Jets’ most recent album of original material was 2020’s ‘A Billion Heartbeats’; they released covers album ‘Home Protests’ the same year. It saw them take on tracks by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Willy Mason and Robert Wyatt, alongside their own version of Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel’s 1986 duet ‘Don’t Give Up.

The full track listing for Flanagan’s ‘Jack Rides the Sky’ is as follows:

1. Curses

2. Skyhorse x Skyhorse

3. Gravy Train

4. Unbelievable

5. Don’t Ask Me Why

6. Something Has Changed

7. Misty

8. Lately

9. Blue Canoe

10. Girls and Boys

11. Try

12. Why Am I Only Here