.Finding Their Way

Purgatory.

A state of temporary suffering or purification after death in order for souls to be cleansed before reaching heaven. It isn’t hell, but a constant feeling of dread while trying to reach the other—hopefully more beautiful and easier—side.

It’s a state of being all too familiar to Mike Brandon, lead singer and guitar player for the Mystery Lights, a New York via Salinas garage psych band playing the Catalyst Atrium on Wednesday, Nov. 13 with Ron Gallo. They’re currently touring on the September release of their third full-length album of the same name.

For Brandon, purgatory was a period when the band was just going through the motions, saying he “forgot the point” of music and performance as important, life-changing elements in people’s everyday struggle.

“Purgatory has a bigger meaning than what people might think,” he admits. “The Mystery Lights lay dormant for four years and we were kind of lost, not sure of what was next. We were in a purgatory state. Are we going to give in, staying lost, succumbing to the shadow and end? Or are we going to come together, expand our sound and elevate ourselves?”

Thankfully for fans of fuzzy guitar rock everywhere, the five-piece went through what Brandon calls “an interesting purification” of getting back to their roots.

“It’s supposed to be a fun time!” he remembers. “We’re trying to get up there and have a party with our friends in the crowd. When we got back to the basics of connecting with people and inspiring ourselves, it all became fun again.”

This Wednesday will be the first time in two years that the Mystery Lights have played their—original—hometown area and promises to be a show not to miss. The band started in 2004 when co-founding member and lead guitar player Luis Alfonso (“L.A”) Solano saw Brandon practicing at the Salinas Skatepark.

“He watched me do these crazy 360s off a box and not-but-almost landing them,” Brandon says. “He just thought I was a crazy kid and we ended up having mutual friends in common who introduced us.”

It’s a rare thing for a band who started two decades ago to only have three albums out in the wild. However, for the Mystery Lights quality is always better than quantity and Purgatory delivers all of the raw, psychedelic garage energy needed in these post-election times. By pure coincidence—or maybe cosmic design outside of the group’s hands—their albums seem to always be around an election or some major world event.

“The math is crazy,” says Brandon. “The first record [2016’s self-titled] came out when Trump won the first time. The second [2019’s Too Much Tension!] was before Biden won, but during the Trump reign. And now Trump gets elected again! I don’t know why it happens this way.”

The new album shows a band that has finely tuned their sound with their now permanent lineup of Brandon and Solano on guitars, Alex Amini on bass, Lily Rogers on keys/organ and Zach Butler on drums. While the group’s sound draws from massively pivotal bands from the dawn of rock ’n’ roll like the Kinks, the 13th Floor Elevators, Blue Cheer and the Nuggets collections, they also list acts like Television, Ramones and Watsonville punks Los Dryheavers as influences.

The result is a crunchy yet poppy sound straight outta the 1960s with darker, deeper, spiritual and psychological themes about facing one’s demons and the state of society instead of romance and wanting to hold hands. Like the title track with the lyrics “I truly tried my best/to cleanse the sins off my chest/Sometimes, see, it just don’t come out,” or the opening lines to the driving track, “In the Streets” (“He preferred life living out in the streets/He found more freedom livin’ out in the streets”). Then there’s “Trouble” which nails the message home with lines like “I create my pain/Embrace my insanity/For it’s my own/I call it home.”

However, it’s not all dark and gloomy. Songs like “Sorry I Forgot Your Name” have a playful edge to them with a universal, all-too-human theme.

The irony of Purgatory is that it finds the band at their very best in years. They have walked through the fire and come out better for it, ready to spread the message to fellow travelers that things can get better with perseverance, love and a little insanity.

The Mystery Lights play at 8pm on Wednesday, Nov. 13 at the Catalyst Atrium, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. Tickets are $24.56. 831-713-5492.