THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: MINI ALBUM THINGY WINGY (2015)
1) Pish; 2) Prší Prší; 3) Get
Some; 4) Dust; 5) Leave It Alone; 6) Mandrake Handshake; 7) Here Comes The
Waiting For The Sun.
Yes, apparently this is the correct title of Newcombe's second artistic outburst of
2015 — not ʽPishʼ, as a fairly securely stoned Brian Jones seems to be telling
you from his vantage position on the front sleeve. ʽPishʼ itself is only the
name of the first track, which opens with a soaked-in-Sixties echoey blues-pop
riff and quickly becomes a slow, monotonous, psychedelic vamp that takes you
all the way back... no, not really into 1967, but rather into 1995-1996, back
to Newcombe's own roots. Pretty much all of the unpredictable, bizarrely mashed-up
experimentation of the band's «second golden age» that began with My Bloody Underground has been thrown
out of the window — so who knows what happened? My best guess is that Anton,
once again, switched his drug of preference choice.
The results are not too bad, especially because
of the wise choice to keep this restoration of traditional Brian Jones family
values short and sweet — 34 minutes is indeed a «mini-album», albeit far from
Newcombe's first attempt at brevity, and he does manage to drag us through some
cool ideas and textures in the meantime. The problem is... all the old problems
are back, too: each of the tracks exhausts its load of ideas in about one
minute, and then it all depends on whether that one minute was enough to cast
its trance over you or not. Take the longest piece for an example: ʽLeave It
Aloneʼ quickly sets up a tough threatening mood, constructing a double-barrel
musical machine out of one fuzzy, sustained chord and a dirty one-string vamp
around it (think Jorma Kaukonen trying out Neil Young's style), and it's cool,
but that's all it does for six minutes, and I cannot even say that the lead
guitar kicks sufficient ass to endure this. (A real Neil Young probably could, but a real Neil Young would
probably refuse to play like he was stoned out of his mind, and with BJM this
is almost always an obligatory condition).
On the slightly odder side of things, ʽPrší
Pršíʼ does continue the recently established tradition of odd collaborations —
this time, with Vladimir Nosal, allegedly the frontman of an indie band from
Slovakia named Queer Jane (judging by what little I've heard from then on
Youtube, they specialize in Beatlesque pop). Curiously, even though most of
Queer Jane's material is sung in English, this
track is sung in Slovak, because what can be more psychedelic than the usage of
a Slavic language on an American retro-psychedelic album? However, if Slavic
languages do not, by their very existence, already mystify and befuddle you,
the track will hardly be more than just another pleasant, quickly forgettable
psychedelic pastiche.
Elsewhere, you find a passable, but useless
cover of a bona fide psychedelic classic (ʽDustʼ by the 13th Floor Elevators,
with a lovingly recreated sound of that band's infamous electric jug); another
slow, pleasant, predictable vamp that seems to be here just so that Anton can
use a cool title like ʽMandrake Handshakeʼ; and, corniest of all, ʽHere Comes
The Waiting For The Sunʼ, which, sounds absolutely nothing like either ʽHere
Comes The Sunʼ or ʽWaiting For The Sunʼ, but rather, as some reviewers have
already noted, like Donovan's ʽHurdy Gurdy Manʼ. Not that good old Donovan
hasn't done his fair share of waiting for the sun back in the day, but enough
with the pseudo-post-modern titles already, eh?
Anyway, no criticism whatsoever about the
sound of it all, Newcombe still understands the art of classic psychedelic
guitar (and throw in a bit of sitar and Mellotron where appropriate) better
than anybody else in this world. It's just that he has once again given up on
the idea to advance that art, and
remains perfectly content just to fiddle around with it, in his usual
«glorified lazy» mode. And putting your trusted mascot, for the first time
ever, right up front on that album sleeve (did he even secure the rights for
the photo?), is not going to mask the fact that Mini Album Thingy Wingy does seem like an attempt to wing it, and
if so, then why does it even exist? We can always pull off Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request
off the shelf if we're in this kind of mood — there's no big need for a third
one.
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