The Mystery Lights are a band who live in the the year 2019 by fate, not by choice. Their music suggests that they arrived in the present day after passing through some wrinkle in time adorned with paisley; they are obsessed with '60s garage rock and psychedelia, and their songs and their approach make it clear they've done their homework when it comes to re-creating the nuts and bolts of this stuff. The Mystery Lights' third album, 2019's Too Much Tension!, captures the sound of that halcyon era when America's youth ...
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The Mystery Lights are a band who live in the the year 2019 by fate, not by choice. Their music suggests that they arrived in the present day after passing through some wrinkle in time adorned with paisley; they are obsessed with '60s garage rock and psychedelia, and their songs and their approach make it clear they've done their homework when it comes to re-creating the nuts and bolts of this stuff. The Mystery Lights' third album, 2019's Too Much Tension!, captures the sound of that halcyon era when America's youth stopped playing "Louie Louie" and started abusing recreational drugs with a truly impressive accuracy, as if someone discovered a long-lost collaborative project with the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the Chocolate Watch Band, and the Seeds joining forces in the studio. Too Much Tension! is the band's second album for Wick Records, the rock offshoot of respected retro-soul label Daptone, and just as the Daptone House of Soul studio helps its acts capture a vintage sound, the same studio gives the fuzzy guitars, boomy bass, buzzy keyboards, and oddball electronic effects that dominate these arrangements a sonic personality that could have come out of some lost Pebbles anthology. You could accuse the Mystery Lights of being a bit short on originality, and you'd have a valid point, since nearly everything here has some antecedent in a scratchy piece of vinyl pressed five decades earlier. But the execution is nearly flawless, and they're not only capable of playing this music in the classic style, they can write it nearly as well. Slip on your Nehru jacket, turn on the black light, and turn up Too Much Tension! if you're in the mood to travel back in time for about 31 minutes with the Mystery Lights as your guides. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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