I was first elucidated to the band Milk Music in 2012, the same year that I moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Northern Nevada high desert. I saw them perform once before leaving our shared homeland and I reveled in the dgaf ‘freedom, man’ sentiment their music preached. I carried with me some of that energy to help facilitate my transition into this new place and new life. About a year later, I had the extreme pleasure of sharing the stage with them at The Holland Project. They were supporting their newest release Cruise Your Illusion at the time and after that second exposure I was even more enamored. Both performances were unforgettable and their recordings continued to evolve and mature into the band that would ultimately become the Mystic 100’s.

It’s difficult to describe their music without relying on obvious comparisons that would suggest that it is entirely derivative. I used to describe them to friends with a fairly reductive “Dinosaur Jr, Jr” that got maybe the sound across (at the time) but not the point. The common theme on further reflection seems to be one of absolute indulgence. Their music and its messages are so unapologetically grandiose that they allow for all of the influences on display to exist alongside the band’s novel and signature delivery. Nostalgia is a very powerful drug, and definitely high on the laundry list of powerful drugs involved in writing these songs.

This theme is further accentuated by the release of first an album with the name and eventually the band renaming themselves Mystic 100’s. With each respective move we are invited to share in that extra indulgence implied by the cigarette being just that much longer. Prolong the pleasure, let the high never end. The newest release by the now named Mystic 100’s, On a Micro Diet, is the most indulgent take to date, and I am thrilled to find out how this expansion on a theme will translate to a live performance.