September 17, 2024 by A.S. Van Dorston

Brooklyn via Cali band hits a peak on third album, destined to be a cult garage punk classic.

Cali-to-Brooklyn transplants The Mystery Lights specialize in 60s style garage punk and psych along the lines of The Seeds, The Monks and 13th Floor Elevators. Some may say, and so have literally hundreds of other bands. But The Mystery Lights have stood out even on their 2009 demo Teenage Catgirls and the Mystery Lightshow by packing deep knowledge of a variety of influences, from surf and country to Captain Beefheart and CBGB’s era Voidoids proto-punk. Everything they take on is spot-on, with Mike Brandon’s timeless sounding guitar licks and fully committed vocals.

When they try on sinister garage noir like “What Happens When You Turn the Devil Down” from their 2016 debut, “Someone Else is in Control” from Too Much Tension! (2019) and “Cerebral Crack” on the latest, it’s so good I wish they would focus on that approach. Instead, the band has more stylistic diversity than ever, but with some of their most consistently great songwriting. The ghost-organ driven “Together Lost” sounds like The Coral invoking a desolate, Doorsy version of Ennio Morrison that would be a monster showstopper if applied judiciously to the right context in a movie.

Opener “Mighty Fine & All Mine,” “Trouble” and the title track feature falling-down-stairs yet syncopated rhythms that hint they may have been listening to Safe As Milk and Strictly Personal era Magic Band. The closest the album comes to a lull is “Automatic Response,” but even here, Brandon’s impassioned vocals draws you in. “Don’t Want No Don’t Need No” sounds like a long lost Nuggets era cult hit single, and album closer “Snuck Out” is a girl gone bad rumination that invokes the kind of smoky mood pieces that gave Arctic Monkeys crossover hits over a decade ago. The raw garage production ensures this won’t be spooking any charts, but it should.