M!stakes.

Never heard of ‘em? Now you have. Never listened to ‘em? Go. Listen. Now. Before it’s too late, go listen to the greatest Brooklyn band that no one’s ever heard of, so you can say you knew them way back when they lived in an apartment one floor down from your brother’s apartment in the way-out-freakin’-east coast of Bushwick like I do.

Well, maybe not just like I do, just. Just listen to them. Now. Take a break from this review, and come back, I’ll still be here.

See? Wow.

M!stakes aren’t revolutionary, they’re just good. Fantastically good without being too inaccessable. And difficult to describe. That too. Perhaps because they’ve found a way to emulate some of the best aspects of just-slightly-above-the-public-radar rock, new-wave, grunge, pop and punk music from the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. (Ed: This decade is known as the aught’s. It’s 2007 people, we need to decide on a name here, and The Aughts was good enough a hundred years ago, it’s got some classy charm, and it sounds good. There. It’s decided)

Some of the first bands that come to mind to describe M!stakes would be are The Clash, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, with slight streaks from the grunge era like Stone Temple Pilots and perhaps a dash of Soundgarden, but with compositions that you may expect from Radiohead, just without their level of weirdness and alienation. There. That describes it. I think.

M!stakes, are understandably often misspelled as Mistakes, and improperly prefaced with “The” (They’re not The M!stakes, they’re M!stakes) which may make them harder to find than other bands, but when spelled right, they’re easy to Google.

According to their site, M!stakes are Based on an ethic where every wrong can be a right, [we] are music.” Hmm. There is a long tradition post-modernism that the only way to create new art is to break down all the borders and rules that we have over own expectations, and come at art blindly, trusting our instincts not our conventions to create beauty.

The result is often really, really shitty. Cats scratch on a blackboard and call it Free Jazz. Ugh. painful. M!stakes don’t break out of the Rock Box, they just find the most exciting, catchy, and intelligent way to dance around it, which is a new but strong take on the Brooklyn Indie-Punk aesthetic. An aesthetic that has set up shop in the industrial garage paradise of Bushwick; one of the few spots left in New York where Punk can still thrive.

Progressive tendencies and a cynical outlook combine into a tight unit, the end result is an experimental pop style: Loud, furious, and unapologetic with danceable rhythms. Their site continues to explain, but they sell themselves short, mostly on their own intelligent approach to melodies and song structure, making music for a smarter crowd and perhaps not even caring if the adoring masses of dolts and drones don’t jump on as well.

With their most recent release M!stakes seem to be dancing to the rule of 3’s. Their first album, (a brilliant lauch onto the rock scene) features a three part track titled: The Mirror/The Box/The Judge which begins as a Circus-Rock psychadelia trip with a Rocksteady beat. The Box then launches into a speedy melodic scream fest in the middle of which the music cuts out and the band all chant: “Think you’re gonna get out? You shouldn’t be sure. How you gonna get out when there IS NO DOOR!” before the beat changes up once more into The Judge to a driving rhythm, coasting us to a soft, anti-climatic cease. The next track has the audacity to begin as if it didn’t know that the one before it just rocked the shit out of us.

Then after months of obessisvely poring over their self-titled that was produced just a 25 minute bike ride from my front door, M!stakes were back!! With a 3-part album titled Crying Lady Tiger. 3 discs, 3 tracks each, $3 each, each with a macrame cover, a silkscreened fold-out booklet. I had exactly $9 on me when their show ended. I walked out with Crying Lady Tiger.

Find them. Before its too late.