The Beautiful Mistake came over to the UK with love and they got love back in return. Cancelling their debut headlining tour of the States the band took up a request from Funeral For A Friend to join them on a brief jaunt around old Blighty. The album "Light I Match, For I Deserve To Burn" is an emotional journey filled with hope and despair in equal measures, but as the bands spokesperson and bass player Jon Berndtson is keen to explain to Designer Magazine this ain't no Staind style self pitying shtick.

Q: This tour with Funeral For A Friend is a really important step for the Beautiful Mistake. I believe you cancelled a tour in the States so you could get over here?
A: Yeah, it was going to be our first headline tour ever. But we got offered this tour and we've been waiting forever to play shows out here, and plus with Funeral For A Friend because we love their music. And we don't think were ready to be headliners in the US, we'd rather support in the US until were comfortable with the set.

It's weird when we show up to gigs in the UK and we see American bands that are huge have played the same place we have played. Like when we played the Academy (Birmingham) last night the Foo Fighters and Cave In have played there. That's just weird to us because they're bands we listen to and they're arena rock in the US. But our favourite bands are U2, Catherine Wheel and The Cure so we have tons of different influences outside America. We listen to a lot of older bands and people say how does it come out in your music? I think with the newer material people will be able to pick out influences a little bit more.
 

Q: From the reaction i've seen today before you've even hit the stage The Beautiful Mistake seem to be making an impact. Still though people don't know a great deal about. What's the bands ethos and what did you set out to do?
A: I moved from half way across the US to join the band and this was before they had a fanbase, before they were signed, before anything. I just liked the guys and liked the music. It started out small with no expectations - maybe just record an EP by ourselves, put it out and tour a little bit. In our home town we were playing bars in front of 10 people and we just wanted to get a show at Chain Reaction or The Glasshouse and now it's beyond everything.

The biggest thing that is always consistent with us we always want to raise the bar as far as musicianship and I think we always just want to become a better band. Regardless of all this that's the one thing which is always constant. That's always the constant struggle regardless of all the awesome things that happen.
 

Q: There does seem to be a real community and DIY ethic amongst the bands like yourself, FFAF, Early November etc. where once you've discovered one band it opens up the door to numerous others. Do you feel part of this international community bonded by a love of music?
A: Definitely. That's why for us we've toured the US for over a year. And to take where were at now in the US and putting that live show in Europe who have never seen us before. The kind of kids who would come to see FFAF are the kind of kids who would probably like us. It opens up their eyes and also it helps us make friends too because that what were about.

Regardless of how our newer stuff progresses we always wanted to able to mesh melody with the heavier parts. It might be a different heavy though, like on "Light A Match" a lot of it is hard-core influenced whereas I think on the newer stuff when we say heavy it's a heavy influenced by heavy rock bands like Helmet or Failure or A Perfect Circle. I think kids will still be able to relate to it, it's just going to be a little maturer.
 

Q: What's great about a band like you guys is it loses the macho posturing of the old skool rock fraternity. Fans must scan your lyrics in the same way that fans of the Smiths and the Manics did in the old day. Out at the shows you must experience this first hand - is that the case?
A: A lot of kids will come up and be like "man, this song helped me get through a car accident I was in". A lot of kids say that about a song "For A Friend" that we have and the lyrics aren't really about that but we don't care, that's why we leave the lyrics open to interpretation. When you leave them open to interpretation anyone can take a song and relate it to anything in their life.

In America you see a lot of bands and it's cliched to be like 'I had a rough childhood, my family sucks and my dad beat the hell out of me and blah blah blah'. It's a cop out. Regardless of how bad things get, I had tons of things happen my life that are probably 10 times worse than the singer from Staind...listening to that guy talk about how crap his life is - it's like 'dude, you have millions of dollars and that doesn't equal happiness. Your life is so awesome, you get to play music in front of people" and I think he loses fact of that. And bands like Metallica getting uptight about music sharing for free. I think there's just a lot of other things you can worry about in the world. You can deal with negative issues and still be positive and still be inspiring, the problem is all those bands are just negative period.
 

Q: You were talking earlier about the new material you're working on over the 6 month break. How does it compare to "Light A Match" (which still isn't released in the UK until 11th August)?
A: A lot of the songs on "Light A Match" were written when we first started as a band. I also think that it was really rushed, we only had 10 days in the studio with 1 day designated to mixing (at least that was what it was supposed to be, but we only used half of that because we didn't get everything done).

I think with the newer material it branches off the song "On Building" and then a song called "A Safe Place". If people like the kind of feel I think they would like the newer stuff because it's bringing out our influences. Were getting away from not really screaming and being more rock based - using effects and our influences like U2 and Failure. It's still going to be The Beautiful Mistake.