(A RECORDINGS; 2014)
The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s founder (and pretty much the only official member of the group today), Anton Newcombe, has flirted with success, dabbled with drugs (actually, he embraced them wholeheartedly), had mental meltdowns on stage, fought with band-mates and, amidst a litany of self-destructive demons, produced some of the best music of the past 20 years. Most of these demons (including the ones listed above) are chronicled in the 2004 documentary DIG!; what we’re here to talk about is the new BJM album, REVELATION. The release is record number 14 or 15 (or 23 depending on how you count these things) from the band and, to these ears, Newcombe hasn’t lost a step. Even though the overall vibe of REVELATION isn’t as frenetic as earlier albums, it is a more cohesive collection as Newcombe is solely responsible for songwriting and production as well as playing most of the instruments.
“Vad Hande Med Dem?” starts off as an upbeat jangle-pop tune before turning into a kind of Arabic sounding psychedelia with buried-in-the-mix vocals and a Stax-style horn chart. With an odd rhythm and blues vibe, “What You Isn’t” is sort of a slow-cooking groove with laidback, almost spoken word vocals. “Unknown” is a modest little groover that would not sound out of place on THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES REQUEST. The track is short – less than two minutes – and wholly acoustic, save for a mid-’60s style guitar solo. The …SATANIC… Stones are back, hooking up with Donovan at a psychedelic day camp on “Memory Camp.” It’s laconically slow folk music with somehow lazy sounding vocals. The Beatles – John Lennon in particular – get the BJM treatment on “Days, Weeks and Moths.” The song features an echo-laden guitar, with distinct single note picking and eerily haunting backing vocals. The instrumental, “Duck and Cover,” picks up the tempo with a repetitive, slightly hypnotic vibe.
The second half of the album (record two, for the vinyl junkies among us) kicks off with the UK Northern Soul of “Food For Clouds.” The track borders on Ska, but is more akin to latter day Jam (or Paul Weller’s post-Jam group, the Style Council), with the orchestral flourishes offering a nice counter-balance to the funky horns and barely audible vocals, sounding a lot like Dusty Springfield, too. “Second Sighting” is a gentle acoustic tune with an Eastern European, almost Gypsy vibe, with various wind and string instruments floating to the surface before sinking back into the mix. “Memorymix” sounds like a remix (even the name implies it), but I’m fairly certain that it’s just another in a string of typically loopy BJM songs. With the top-heavy synthesized bass, Morris Code-like beeps and blips and nonsensical dance-track lyrics (as best as I can decipher them, anyway), it’s weird but fun. The slightly Gothic feel of the lugubrious “Fist Full of Bees” comes off like a somewhat happier Bauhaus. “Nightbird” is another primarily acoustic tune with vocals that are way more up-front than any other song on the album. It has a nice Beatley vibe (something by George Harrison or John Lennon… maybe even something from one of their solo records). The jangle-pop sound is back on “Xibalba,” the happiest sounding track on the whole record. Horns, keyboards and strings blend together for a perfectly trippy feel. “Goodbye (Butterfly)” has the same kind of vibe as the previous track, but with a much slower tempo.
The surfeit of slower tempo songs can get to you after a bit and, honestly, REVELATION could just as easily have been a ten or (at most) eleven track affair; we could have done without “Goodbye (Butterfly),” for sure. Still, what I said about cohesiveness in the intro stands and, overall, this another enjoyable outing from Anton Newcombe and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind seeing the current BJM touring unit take a stab at the next record.