THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: AUFHEBEN (2012)
1) Panic In Babylon; 2)
Viholliseni Maalla; 3) Gaz Hilarant; 4) Illuminomi; 5) I Want To Hold Your
Other Hand; 6) Face Down On The Moon; 7) The Clouds Are Lies; 8) Stairway To
The Best Party In The Universe; 9) Seven Kinds Of Wonderful; 10) Waking Up To
Hand Grenades; 11) Blue Order / New Monday.
According to Hegelian dialectics, Aufheben («picking up» or «canceling»)
is the process that takes place when a thesis is confronted with an anti-thesis
— presumably followed by synthesis. This either invites a dialectical approach
towards understanding this album by The Brian Jonestown Massacre, or it could
mean that Anton Newcombe once took a German dictionary off the shelf, opened it
on a random page, and let Fate decide to guide him through to a connection with
Hegel — because, let's face it, Hegel was a fairly psychedelic guy, despite all
the formal-logical trappings. And yes, you guessed it — Hegel could be just as
boring as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and he could be just as proud of it,
too.
If I think really, really hard, I could
actually lead myself towards understanding Aufheben
(the album) as a synthesis of sorts — it is, indeed, a cross between the dark
groovery of the band's last two albums and
their earlier, softer, limper homage to Sixties' psychedelia. A song like ʽI
Want To Hold Your Other Handʼ, for instance, would be totally out of place on My Bloody Underground, and even though
its association with the Beatles ends with its name (in the time that it takes
Anton to get his point across, John Lennon would have had the time to hold your
hand, hold your other hand, hold your legs, hold all the other parts of your
body, and dump you for Yoko Ono), it does bring us back the old personality of
Anton Newcombe, one that we'd almost forgotten with all that po-mo weirdness
of killing Sgt. Pepper with Russian lyrics.
The album starts out with a couple dark, but
not too bass-heavy grooves: ʽPanic In Babylonʼ is set to a cool, steady rock
beat with Near Eastern woodwind overtones (a little reminiscent of old Hawkwind
experiments in such mergers), and ʽViholliseni Maallaʼ has a Finnish title
because the lead vocals are gallantly ceded over to Eliza Karmasalo, who must
be Finnish (I suppose) and who lends the track a certain clichéd coldness,
while in the background the band is entertaining us with chiming guitar leads,
and occasionally a Robert Smith-style melancholic, echoey guitar line will break
through the clearing as well and send you on a gloomy trip down memory lane.
Both tracks sound fine, but... lightweight
— like Air or some of those other atmospheric, psycho-adult-contemporary
entertainers that understand beauty, but do not strive for the whole depth of
it. But that's okay, we can take it. We have long since given up on the idea
that Anton Newcombe could lead us into the promised land anyway.
From there on, we just keep drifting between
these steady rock beat grooves and throwbacks to 1966 (sometimes very harsh
throwbacks — ʽStairway To The Best Party In The Universeʼ, despite the title,
steals its sitar riff from the Stones' ʽPaint It Blackʼ rather than from Led
Zeppelin... ah crap, I'm getting really
tired of jotting down all these combinations), but on the whole, the record
does not shoot for the same kind of thoroughly unpredictable weirdness as its
predecessor. There are some leisurely, «retro-progressive» (hey, nice word)
flute-and-sitar instrumentals like ʽFace Down On The Moonʼ; some pastoral
themes with swooping strings to disorient your brain (ʽThe Clouds Are Liesʼ);
and some tracks that are seriously messed up with vocal overdubs (ʽSeven Kinds
Of Wonderfulʼ, where they seem to be singing in French, but it is really hard
to tell because the polyphony is so overwhelming).
I like the way it all sounds — even if the
weirdness and the heaviness have been toned down, the album only rarely reminds
me of the irritating laziness of past BJM «masterpieces», and at least all of
the grooves have their legitimate emotional interpretations, if you care enough
to wait for them to come to you. But in the process, it kind of seems as if The
Committee To Keep Music Evil once again started lagging behind on its primary
purpose, and that the momentum gained by Newcombe with his «snarling» approach
began to dissipate once more. All the same, I would like to extend a thumbs up
to the album — certainly not because of its gimmicky aspects (which are
negligible, anyway, compared to Who
Killed Sgt. Pepper?), but... well, just because. I think I have the same
type of reaction to late 1970s Hawkwind: pleasant, inoffensive, toe-tappy,
mildly catchy, mildly mysterious stuff. Goes easy on the ears.
I appreciate the lack of gimmickry on this album. I think that essentially Anton Newcombe is interested in sound -- far more interested in sound than in words. The audio inserts (phone messages, etc) on earlier albums sound forced to me. Maybe he's mellowed out a bit and decided that its OK to focus on sounds and to stop trying to be self-consciously "evil."
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