Jetsetmania!: The Ultimate Collection

If you haven't heard the Jetset, nothing will prepare you for it. They are a group that seem like they didn't ever exist, as if they were created for a television show or movie decades later -- sort of like the One-Ders in That Thing You Do or Mariah Carey in Glitter, when the groups don't play by the rules of history, they just float through it. But the Jetset were very real and they did appear on TV and they did have hits, at least on the U.K. indie charts, and they milked it for all it was worth, creating comics, trading cards, and the appearance of neo-Monkees/Beatles publicity stunts. All of this was to prop up a band, led by Paul Beauvoir, that turned out guitar pop and unabashedly worshipped '60s pop -- not just the music, but the kitsch and culture. In short, they were an anachronism in the mid-'80s, and they sound even more so years later, as the definitive 49-track, double-disc set Jetsetmania!: The Ultimate Collection illustrates. That doesn't mean this sounds bad, because it doesn't -- it's cheerful, effervescent pop, sometimes catchy, sometimes not, always engaging in its own insulated sense of fun. Ultimately, this is pretty slight stuff, but its circumstances and surrounding story make it interesting. And, truth be told, its insulation, self-conscious reverence, and miniature pop tunes really are eerily prescient of the indie pop underground of the '90s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine|