B-Side Guys

There’s something fitting about a drummer writing a song called “Count” that ends with “fuck it, I don’t count.” Chris Cester spent his Jet years as the engine behind one of the early 2000s’ biggest rock bands, co-writing and selling millions of records while sitting behind a kit. Mystic Knights, the trio he formed with Aaron Eisenberg and Emmanuel Castro and named by longtime friend Noel Gallagher, is the project where he steps out front and starts breaking his own rules.

“Count” is built around the oldest joke in rock: the ritual count-in. “All you gotta do if you want a hit record is count,” Cester announces, before running through the formula and then abandoning it mid-sentence. The Veuve Clicquot non sequitur that follows isn’t a mistake. It’s the point, the sound of someone who learned every industry trick well enough to know exactly when to ignore them.

Written late at night from a single guitar riff and a deliberately minimal rhythm during a period of personal reset, the track has the directness of something built without an audience in mind. The garage rock framework draws from The Stooges and Queens of the Stone Age, but the production restraint keeps it from feeling like a genre exercise. It’s driving without being busy, which is a harder balance to strike than it sounds, particularly for someone with Cester’s instinct for maximalism behind a full kit.

The song doesn’t resolve into a thesis about authenticity versus formula. It just stops counting and keeps moving, which makes the argument more convincing than any manifesto would.