The Brian Jonestown Massacre: Don't Get Lost

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: DON'T GET LOST (2017)

1) Open Minds Now Close; 2) Melody's Actual Echo Chamber; 3) Resist Much Obey Little; 4) Charmed I'm Sure; 5) Groove Is In The Heart; 6) One Slow Breath; 7) Throbbing Gristle; 8) Fact 67; 9) Dropping Bombs On The Sun; 10) UFO Paycheck; 11) Geldenes Herz Menz; 12) Acid 2 Me Is No Worse Than War; 13) Nothing New To Trash Like You; 14) Ich Bin Klang.

At this point, I am beginning to question myself whether or not this recent explosion of BJM albums might be due to Anton Newcombe misunderstanding the meaning of the classic Latin recommendation of Festina lente. Where most people would understand it sort of figuratively, as a call to focused and efficient action tempered by prudence and accuracy, Newcombe seems to take it more literally — as an appeal to release as many new records in the upcoming years as possible, containing as many slow-moving, hyper-draggy songs as possible.

At least the previous three albums were all short; Don't Get Lost clocks in at approximately 72 minutes — admittedly, not a record length for Newcombe, who used to be famous for slowly and meticulously bleeding out his grooves until the CD begged for mercy; but the last time he did that was in the era of the band's artistic «rebirth» with My Bloody Underground and Who Killed Sgt. Pepper, almost a decade ago. Since then, Newcombe experienced no new rebirths, largely returning to the original style of BJM, occasionally diversified by stylistic references to groove styles past 1967, and Don't Get Lost is no exception to the rule: the fourteen tracks captured here will give you no new insights whatsoever.

And me, too, I find myself at a loss once again. Clearly, the only way this sloth-like guy could churn out such a huge record about four months after his previous one was by quickly working out a few grooves and sticking to them — indeed, the opening track, ʽOpen Minds Now Closeʼ, rides on for eight minutes without a single deviation from its established formula. It's like a metronomic, unnerving groove by Can, but simplified to the core and with absolutely no room left for improvisation: elevator muzak for dark psychedelic types. Naturally, with this approach it is the easiest thing in the world to stretch a potentially 30-minute long record to 70 minutes. But then again, I reserve harsh judgement, because BJM always goes best with mushrooms (this is an objective fact, scientifically verified by the band's leader), and I'm not much of a mushroom man, so I cannot verify if the textures of Newcombe are truly a perfect psychological fit with chemi­cally altered brain activity or not.

In the sphere of ideology, Anton is still pretending that some of his songs should function as manifestos, hence such titles as ʽResist Much Obey Littleʼ (a bit paradoxical, since the steady, cyclical, descending-ascending acoustic rhythm pattern of the song is so mind-numbing that it only makes you want to resist little and obey much, at best) and ʽAcid 2 Me Is No Worse Than Warʼ, one of the album's few excursions into soft techno, drum machines, sampled vocals, and siren-themed synthesizers. ʽDropping Bombs On The Sunʼ is another title that might trigger poli­tical associations, and yet again, the track is a slow, totally stoned groove, ruled by minimalistic brass-imitating tones and lead vocals from Tess Parks, who still retains the status of Anton's muse by managing to sound twice as stoned as he does. («And far sexier», I wanted to add before rea­lizing that having sex with Tess Parks, judging from the perspective of her musical output, would probably only be efficient in an alternate universe where one minute of their time equals one hour of ours. «Slow down, you move too fast» is definitely not about these guys).

In his struggle to retain his cool, Newcombe does things that I hardly understand at all — for instance, calling one of the tracks ʽThrobbing Gristleʼ, even though Throbbing Gristle themselves would probably have regarded the entire brand of BJM production as a cheap profanation of the genuine avantgarde aesthetics (the track itself is just another monotonous psychedelic groove with Parks yawning and groaning all over the place). The next-to-last track, ʽNothing New To Trash Like Youʼ, is surprisingly faster than the rest — pretty much a generic rockabilly number buried under the generic layers of BJM production, and still somehow managing to sound as lethargic as everything else. One other track, ʽGeldenes Herz Menzʼ, sounds like modern lounge jazz put through the same motions — fussy jazzy drumming and tons of soft sax overdubs, hardly a subgenre where the man might make much of an impression.

Overall, just another year, just another album: nothing too bad, nothing too revelatory. And brace yourselves, because the guy is not about to stop — he's gonna crawl on and on and on, because the number of same-sounding draggy grooves with tons of wobbly overdubs that he can theoreti­cally produce is infinity.