THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: REVELATION (2014)
1) Vad Hände Med Dem?; 2) What
You Isn't; 3) Unknown; 4) Memory Camp; 5) Days, Weeks And Moths; 6) Duck And
Cover; 7) Food For Clouds; 8) Second Sighting; 9) Memorymix; 10) Fist Full Of
Bees; 11) Nightbird; 12) Xibalba; 13) Goodbye (Butterfly).
The problem with a «good formula for
psychedelic music» is that, like most formulae, even this one begins to run dry
after a while. Yes, the BJM did enter a new period of creativity and inspiration
with My Bloody Underground, and
managed to keep music evil for a little while — but with their fourth record
from the same streak, they are beginning to repeat themselves... no, wait,
scratch that, because repetition has always been a key element of the BJM
ideology in the first place. They are beginning to sound like their own shadow
— that would be more precise.
Again, Revelation
is an album of repetitive psychedelic grooves, with each track usually harboring
one riff and one draggy vocal melody. These may be smart or dumb, emotional or
bland, complex or simplistic, but what really
sucks is that they are very close to each other in tone and spirit. Even Aufheben, calm and quiet as it was
compared to Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?,
seemed more diverse and less predictable than this collection of largely
mid-tempo stomps with echoey bluesy riffs. I actually like some of these riffs,
I really do: ʽFood For Cloudsʼ has an especially nice one,
minor-melancholy-poppy in Robert Smith style, and the little bluesy flourish at
the end of each verse in ʽMemory Campʼ is doggone nasty. But does it really all have to be so... even? The tracks
just blend into each other, and with Newcombe's mumbly mutterings in the place
of normal singing all the time, you just have no hope to carve out separate
identities for the tracks. Song after song after song, it's just the same old
drag.
The only attempts at something relatively
different come in the guise of a few «rhythmically modern» tunes, such as the
funky ʽDuck & Coverʼ and the trancey-clubby ʽMemorymixʼ. They do not feel
like obnoxious intruders, but their moods are the same — all these songs sound like the product of somebody for whom taking
hard drugs is seen as an artistic obligation, rather than a source of pleasure
or enlightenment. He doesn't want to, see, but he has to, or else he won't be able to churn out these tired, dusty,
mentally uncomfortable grooves.
In the end, I just do not see the point. If I
want an album of lean, mean, nasty, and unpredictably crazy BJM grooves, I will
just try one more stab at Who Killed
Sgt. Pepper?. If I want their deconstruction of 1960s aesthetics, I will
rewind the thread all the way back to 1996. Revelation, however, is just a typical going-through-the-motions
effort: tasteful and cool-sounding as always, but adding nothing whatsoever to
the band's legacy. Other than reminding us, perhaps, that as of 2014. Anton
Newcombe is still alive and well. Relatively
well, that is — I guess he's still sulking that nobody brought him Paul
McCartney's head on Heather Mills' wooden peg, after all, and that may have
taken a bite out of his stamina.
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