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The Brian Jonestown Massacre
My Bloody Underground
A Records
Article
written by Ged M
Apr 20, 2008.
This is raw, unmediated Anton, with no producer credited and a lo-fi feel to the recordings; apart from ‘Monkey Powder’ written with Ride’s Mark Gardener, there’s nothing between you and him and his prejudices. Who else would be capable of including a lovely Satie-like piano meditation composed when he was 9 years old and giving it a title like ‘We Are the Niggers of the World’? Or recording a track maxed out with guitar distortion and calling it ‘Automatic Faggot for the People’? You can say that he’s subverting John Lennon and REM but it’s done with an anger and disgust at the state of the world that suggests he’s not looking to make new friends (or win airplay!) with his 13th album.
Recorded in Liverpool and Reykjavik, he’s not compromising much with the sound either; ‘Yeah-Yeah’ is unusual in sounding like the BJM of old but there’s far more experimental and avant-garde work here. All those old shoegazing cathedral/ architecture metaphors would be a bit tired for anyone but Anton, who clearly sees sound in almost a physical way and can work it like sculpture. Whatever you think of his media-/ fan-/ bandmate-baiting history, his music is the one area where he has a major talent. He goes down an Eastern route in ‘Who Fucking Pissed In My Well?’, creates teeth-loosening sledgehammer rhythms in ‘Who Cares Why’, adds Icelandic voices to the ethereal ‘Ljosmyndir’ and shapes an electronic drone in a way that Delia Darbyshire would applaud for ‘Black Hole Symphony’. His finest song (and candidate for ugliest title) is the opening song ‘Bring Me The Head of Paul McCartney On Heather Mills’ Wooden Peg (Dropping Bombs On The White House)’, which is a psychedelic drone-rock Book of Revelations, with Anton in the role of a wild prophet predicting doom.
At 76 minutes of sometimes-going-nowhere repetition, this could have done with a sympathetic producer/editor. But he’s pulled a real Lou Reed trick of doing things because he wants to and sod the rest of the world. The songs will maintain his musical reputation and the (needlessly) provocative presentation will stoke the legend of Anton Alfred Newcombe even more. Like mean ol’ Lou, that probably suits him very well.
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