REVIEWS:
"White boys have been messing with the blues ever since Elvis got an invite to the Sun Records studio in 1954, and Wisconsin's the Mystery Girls are only the latest in a long and seemingly unending line of bands who've made it their business to put a new fire under a style older than Coca-Cola. But if the Mystery Girls' vision is more Blues Explosion than Stovall's Plantation, there's a powerful snarl to this music that speaks to the roots of it even as they beat their cheap guitars and rattletrap drums into submission, and they've put it on tape with commendable power on their third full-length album, Incontinopia. While guitarists Mount Mathieu D'Congo and Jordan Davis kick up an impressive ruckus on this set as bassist Michael Zink and drummer Jamis Kipp throw crash 'n' bash rhythms in all directions, it's Casey Grajek's vocals and harmonica that really tell the tale; the guy ain't quite Little Water, but he can blow well enough to bring the bluesy undertow to the surface and let it jump and shout, and he's a rock & roll belter with power and grimy soul to spare. Dig the garage-centric stomp of "I Took the Poison," the free skronk hoodoo of "First Stage of Love," the Stones-influenced rolling thunder of "Oh! Apollo," the raw and frantic charge through "We're So Illegal" and "Cool It in Control," and the electronic free association of "Cold Feet" and you'll hear a cold shot of blues at the heart of them all, no matter how far out on a ledge these guys take the music. Incontinopia is a liberating blast of noise with some real history deep down amongst the chaos." - Mark Deming, All Music Guide

"If a question mark hangs over the Mystery Girls it’s because this Wisconsin quintet of wiry white (non-effeminate) boys has yet to come out of the garage. Since 2002 they have released two LPs and a handful of singles, yet a Google search on them produces only two relevant results and no recognition from Wikipedia. Perhaps their closeted status hinges on them smelling like a hackneyed bluesy garage rock band destined to play the pub and college circuit forever. Their head-banging, abandoned guitar-riffing, hi-hat-abusing pedestrian angst certainly screams for little else. So does the adolescence of lead singer Casey Grajek’s scratchy threadbare yowls. But their third effort Incontinopia starts off well enough. It is opened by an anodyne ice-cream-truck intro, which scratches into “Oh! Apollo”, a pleasant piece of jangle pop that sounds like it’s been baked under the Californian sun with the Byrds standing watch. Grajek’s reverb-tinged register is then put to good use in “The Magic Is Gone” as he wails and quivers listlessly over a bed of bluesy organ riffs. Unfortunately this middling mash-up of retro rock descends into an aimless smash-up-your-guitar orgy, a sonic rump of what could only be an alcoholic binge. Perhaps the garage is where the Girls belong after all." - Estella Hung, PopMatters.com

"I have a lot of respect for bands treating the long player with reverence, not taking it as a smorgasbord on which to puke up a compilation of songs acting as unrelated segments, but as a blank slate of a format for songs to interact with each other in the confines of its time restraints. Especially when the band has a harmonica player sounding like he takes cues from “the Angry Young THEM!” (“I Don’t Need You”), the hatefuck vitriol of the Dwarves or Tractor Sex Fatality (“Cool It In Control”), all the while retaining a particularly great veneration for the subtle avant- erudite mannerisms of the Velvet Underground (“Oh! Apollo” being an ode to “Sunday Morning” if I’ve ever heard one, while “I Took The Poison” mirrors “Waiting For The Man” like a pristine mountain pond reflects your ugly mug back at ya you drunken Wisconsin duff). Actually… want to know something cool? Yeah you fuckin’ do. Okay then, I was playing this here album on the radio a few weeks back, following the Velvets in light of the spiritual oneness I reckon they have, and as “What Goes On” concluded and bled into the next cut I realized I hadn’t switched the channel for the turntable off and that “Oh! Apollo” was copulating over the airwaves with “Some Kinda Love.” And it was entirely synched. Totally in time. I let it ride out for maybe 45 seconds, captivated by my total idiot savant move. It was fucking awesome. You wish you were there, poser. But back to biznass: this album is fucking great. A real slow burn that eventually comes to fruition and dies right as you’re locked in its grooves, which is why I listened to the sleeping psychedelic undercurrents, reveled in its romping garage beat, and wallowed in the thick full-flavor of an organ-wielding five-man band permeating the entire album about three consecutive times upon receiving it. Seriously, it’s like the freakin’ rebirth of respect for the LP as a format here… as if I’m listening to a modern interpretation of The Young Rascals’ S/T or something, floated our way on fifty years of dirt and disillusionment. A beautiful inaugural trip, a stomping punk kick to the nads, just to relay the baton to the tear-jerking ballad of “The Magic Is Gone”. “We’re So Illegal” is as catchy as anything I’ve heard this new year, while the simplistic chord progressions of “Quit Your Flyin’ Around” coulda’ been lifted from Eddy Current himself. “Cold Feet” goes from light-hearted ramshackle romp to epic travailing across soundscapes the MC5 sometimes found themselves on in mere minutes. “Birds of Paradise” is the sound of natives in the Congo watching European colonialists arrive at their village by boat with only the most insidious plans in mind… Definitely not a hook-laden outing chock fulla’ cheap thrills and sugar highs, but a texturally solid work of good composure. A real cool time, this." - Brandon Gaffey, TerminalBoredom.com

"Vier jaar heeft dit spul op de plank gelegen, opgenomen ten tijde van hun laatste plaat, niet goed genoeg bevonden, of nog onaf, en ondertussen lag de band ‘zo goed als uit elkaar’. Reikhalzend uitzien naar deze plaat zou dus een beetje dom zijn geweest, al hoorden we vlak voor de release dat bassist Zink de hele zooi in een psychedelisch jasje had gemixed. Huh? Heb je de beste basementpunkproducer van Wisconsin tot je beschikking (Justin Perkins) en ga je die ‘overrulen’? Nu was het op de vorige plaat van de Mystery Girls al een beetje onduidelijk hoever hun trippende blik reikte, maar dat de punkgeest wat terzijde was geschoven, was wel duidelijk. Jammer, want het was de beste punkband van de scene." - OOR.nl

"There's precious little information about the album anywhere online -- the label still merely offers a press release from around the time of the 2004 release, and the band's MySpace page offers no details on upcoming shows or the album, besides a picture of the cover. The Girls' allow some of their songs to breathe a bit more here than on past albums, which leaned heavily toward the wall of noise rave-up of their live shows. Opening track "Oh! Apollo" displays some pop influences with a cleanly produced sound featuring glockenspiel (!), and "The Magic Is Gone" comes across more like The Reigning Sound than The Yardbirds or MC5. Fans of the band's more intense side won't be disappointed, with blasters like "Quit Your Flyin Around" and "I Took the Poison" still in the majority overall, and much of side two taken up with the extended jam of "Cold Feet"...incidental sounds or pieces of studio noise also link most of the tracks, and Zink has managed to create a definite flow despite the album's apparently haphazard assemblage. No matter what its genesis was, or whether the band even still exists, this new album from the Girls' adds to their legacy as one of Wisconsin's most powerful bands of the decade." - Bob Koch, Isthmus/The Daily Page, Madison, WI

"Mystery Girls’ first, self-titled album was recorded in one day and mixed the next, a quick, crud-crusted blast of blues-slackened, soul-withered garage rock from the heartland. The band’s third CD, Incontinopia, has been sitting around since recording sessions in 2004 and 2005. It’s anyone’s guess what’s been taking so long, but one thing seems sure: they have not been twiddling knobs in search of the perfect sound. If anything, Incontinopia sounds muddier, more disoriented and less calculated than Mystery Girls, never mind the arty field recordings and French spoken word interruptions. If the first CD was Mystery Girls’ Blues Explosion, this third one is Royal Trux, its melodies glimpsed through a shit storm of distorted chaos...The songs, gritty, sweaty and live sounding, are interspersed with studio effects and found recordings – a music box, a thunderstorm, sexy French girls, a southern man talking about the first stages of love and the boys in the band barking like dogs. It’s an odd mix, the raw authenticity of the music juxtaposed with the forced irony of the samples, and it doesn’t work very well. What you take away from this album are the songs, which have nothing to do with these embellishments.
The first half of the album is quite strong, nonetheless. “Oh! Apollo,” once it ditches its precious introduction, has a swaggering, psychedelic heft to it, a la the Reigning Sound in a contemplative mood. But it’s with “I Took the Poison” that the band finds its soul-grinding, hard-blues groove, with a splintering riff right out of the MC5 playbook. This is, without doubt, the best song on the album, all thundering bass and crazed harmonic and R&B tinged, fist-shaking chorus. Waltz-timed, organ-swelling, “The Magic Is Gone,” isn’t bad either, if you like Elvis hip-shifting action in your romantic ballads. But with “We’re So Illegal,” things begin to get silly. What exactly is this “biblioteque du jambon” the girl is murmuring about, and why does “Quit Your Flying Around” (another very solidly grooving song) have to open with the boys simulating rabid canines?
The album’s second half is noticeably rougher, harder and more difficult to follow. “We Are the Death Cult” follows a flying wedge of guitar chords into bombed-out, murky chaos. There’s a song in there somewhere, but you can’t quite make it out. With “Cool It in Control,” the pace picks up, the guitars turn staccato and frantic and singer Casey Grajek’s voice starts to fray dangerously. It’s a good tune, but again, wrapped in murk and uncertainty. By comparison, the first half of Incontinopia seems far more sharply defined and executed. Endless “Cold Feet” takes this trend to its logical conclusion, jungle-beated, cave-echoing confusion. It’s like the Gris Gris, but even harder to get a grip on, and you can’t really tell whether the dissolution is getting in the way of the song or is, perhaps, the whole point.
So what we have is a handful of pretty good songs, wedged in between silly samples and buffeted by inchoate noise and distortion. Not a terrible deal, by any means, but why did it take four years?" - Jennifer Kelly, Dusted Magazine

"Garage-rock with a strong blues influence. The singer likes to holler about sex and drugs. Its obvious these guys love what they’re doing, I’m sure live all of these songs hold up. On the album, the non-stop Blues barrage gets a bit tedious, but there aren’t too many weak tracks." - Makeshift Reviews

"“Incontinopia”, novoizmišljena riječ koja se ne može prepisati nakon prvog pogleda i novi album Mystery Girls (Wisconsin) koji se čuje nakon prvog slušanja, izlaze četiri godine nakon proslog (”Something In the Water”), solidnog straight garaznjaka s kojim je bend skrenuo pažnju sire garažnolike javnosti. Za ovaj olimpijski ciklus, Mystery Girls su promjenili dlaku (produkciju) ali ne i ćud. Iza sitnih produkcijskih trikova loše je skrivena sviračka kompentencija, kredibilitet kao i dobre pjesme. Dok je prvi album snimljen u jednom danu a produciran u drugom, ovdje se takozvani materijal složio tijekom sessiona godine 2004. te 2005. Usprkos tome, “Incontinopia” zvuci slabo kontrolirano, dovoljno instinktivno i nekako bliže glazbi na koju smo navikli slušajući bendove koje dolaze sa “In the Red” naljepnicom na čelu (koja je pomalo devalvirala u zadnje vrijeme). To je ujedno i preporuka ljudima koji vole takvu nazovi glazbu. Osim toga, uz malo truda, tu se mogu naći, u tragovima, Stooges, MC5 ili slični punomasni rokeri kojima je album veći od zbroja pjesama." - Hombre

"Considering The Mystery Girls’ incredibly mediocre last effort (Something in the Water)—which at even five dollars from the discount record bin, the album’s still a rip-off—the brilliance of Incontinopia is blindsiding. In four years, The Mystery Girls have developed precipitously in musical and lyrical development. In particular, Michael Zink on bass is shit hot; just check the lines on “Quit Your Flyin’ Around” and “I Took the Poison.” Main songwriter Jordan Davis is penning stuff worth remembering. And Casey Grajek’s sole contribution (“We’re So Illegal”) is also noteworthy. Forget Something in the Water; pick Incontinopia—a little Compulsive Gamblers and Flash Express influenced—and give these kids a second chance. Well worth it." – Ryan Leach, Razorcake