{"id":23007,"date":"2022-05-23T05:30:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T09:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23007"},"modified":"2023-02-08T09:30:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T14:30:15","slug":"album-review-brian-jonestown-massacre-fire-doesnt-grow-on-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/23\/album-review-brian-jonestown-massacre-fire-doesnt-grow-on-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Brian Jonestown Massacre — Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One might say that there are two very different sides to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. In person, live and onstage, the band defines erratic. At its best, a BJM concert is transcendent, life affirming and deeply engaging. At its worst, it\u2019s a mess, with concertgoers witness to onstage arguments, endless technical problems, interminable guitar tuning and shambolic, dissolute performances. The problem is that the latter is a much more common occurrence than the former. And for that reason, I will not be reporting on my recent attendance at a BJM show. Let\u2019s just confirm that \u2013 unlike many of my fellow concertgoers \u2013 I was there from the band\u2019s first note to their last.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s another Brian Jonestown Massacre, and it\u2019s that one that has earned the group led by Anton Newcombe a reputation as one of the best modern-day exponents of psychedelic rock. Their 20th<\/sup> album, Fire Doesn\u2019t Grow on Trees<\/em>, is slated for release in June, but thanks to a kind publicist I\u2019ve been able to spend time with it ahead of official release.<\/p>\n

And to (finally) get right to the point, if you dig what BJM is about, you\u2019ll luxuriate in this new album (their first of two scheduled for release in 2022). Few bands can do as much with as little as one or two chords. The droning approach of tunes like \u201cIneffable Mindfuck\u201d draws the listener into BJM\u2019s psychedelic world. The arrangements are densely layered, and \u2013 as the band\u2019s name has long implied \u2013 the spirit of The Rolling Stones\u2019 Their Satanic Majesties Request<\/em> is never far from what\u2019s happening. Newcombe seems to come up with catchy melodic lines at will, and each of the dreamy, insistent, throbbing and gauzy songs has at its core at least one of those.<\/p>\n

Which means that as shoegazey as the band can get, there\u2019s always a rock-solid musical idea at each song\u2019s core. \u201cIt\u2019s About Being Free Really\u201d has a la-la-la kind of singalong quality, with backward electric guitar lines fluttering in and out of the mix while acoustic guitars are feverishly strummed.<\/p>\n

Newcombe\u2019s impish sense of humor might not reveal itself onstage with any kind of regularity, but on record, it\u2019s front and center. \u201cWait a Minute (2:30 to be exact)\u201d is typical of his approach. But the hypnotic, draw-you-in character of songs like \u201cWhat\u2019s in a Name?\u201d is BJM\u2019s true stock in trade. Instruments buried deep in the mix \u2013 like that song\u2019s trilling combo organ \u2013 are more felt than heard, but Newcombe knows a lot about subtlety.<\/p>\n

Even when the band heads in a strung-out, druggy direction \u2013 as with the first half of the dirge-like \u201cBefore and Afterland\u201d \u2013 they do so in appealing fashion. Most of the time, BJM traffics in its style without sounding retro. And when they don\u2019t, they create effective pastiches of bad-trip \u201860s psychedelia like \u201cYou Think I\u2019m Joking?\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing in sharp contrast to the band\u2019s onstage demeanor, there\u2019s a breathtaking level of quality control in Brian Jonestown Massacre\u2019s body of recorded works. Even the slighter songs never feel like filler; each justifies its existence. If psychedelically-oriented jangle rock is your thing, you can safely purchase most any BJM album and be assured of a rewarding listening experience. Early in the band\u2019s career, few would have predicted that the word consistent<\/em> would apply to their output. But across 20-plus albums in 30-plus years, Anton Newcombe and his (occasionally) merry band of musicians have displayed just that: a consistent ability to deliver on the promise of their chosen concept. And Fire Doesn\u2019t Grow on Trees<\/i> is another winner.<\/p>\n

NOTE: I interviewed Anton Newcombe a very, very<\/em> long time ago. Here’s that story<\/a>. And — from even longer ago — here’s even more BJM-related writing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One might say that there are two very different sides to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. In person, live and onstage, the band defines erratic. At its best, a BJM concert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,57,62,65],"tags":[213,414],"class_list":["post-23007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-psych","category-rawk","category-review","tag-anton-newcombe","tag-brian-jonestown-massacre","cat-49-id","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23007"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24893,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007\/revisions\/24893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}