Brian Jonestown Massacre My Bloody Underground. Release Date : April 15, 2008. Label: a Records. Rating: Editor says, 'based on this review, I'd rate this album an "excellent with room for improvement."' Four years ago, the Brian Jonestown Massacre released their darkest, most ambitious album., And This is Our Music. It was a varied display of moody orchestral psychedelic pop. A few years later, a mini album showed a more electronic folk leaning. So when ringleader of the circus Anton Alfred Newcombe posted a rough mix of their new album My Bloody Underground on the band’s website late ‘07, BJM fans were split down the middle. Some said it was their best album yet, they lauded the dark, low-fi, decidedly post rock sound. The other half hoped in their heart of hearts that this was just an unfinished product, and tucked away in the rough demo quality sound were gems just waiting to be excavated. Well, I’m sorry to tell that half of the fan base, “you’re out of luck." Newcombe returns as maniacal as ever. The song titles border on crude, if not laughable. Newcombe’s always said that he picks titles out of nowhere and usually they never mean anything, but it’s as if he got them from someone with Turrets syndrome. “Automatic Faggot for the People!” is a good example. We kick it off with “Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills Wooden Peg (Dropping Bombs on the Whitehouse).” I can‘t believe I just had to type that out. Newcombe has returned, and forget everything I just said about anything, because this song is stunning, and he can call it whatever the fuck he wants. It combines the Eastern drone we‘ve come to know and love, but the warmth is drained out of it. Newcombe is hysterical, raving about some impending doom that’s coming for everyone, it’s fucking your girlfriend, it’s speaking in German, hell it’s playing guitar, it’s even playing right now…hmm just a second, what’s he saying? Is it him he‘s speaking of? Is this another “I’m Really God” song? Whatever, this song, with its offbeat drums and mangled acoustic guitar, has nothing in common with a catchy pop song, but there’s something in that primal groove that will have you nodding your head right along with it. We go into “Infinite Wisdom Tooth/My Last Night in Bed With You.” This song harkens back to early BJM, like it was recorded in the same batch of demo‘s as “Good Morning Girl” or “Hide and Seek.” It’s got that whining, God-spot inducing guitar the BJM have trademarked, and this song should really rock you good. But the production value impedes it in such a way you will be turning up the volume as far as it can go. It’s like you’re listening to it being played from someone else’s apartment, across the street, in a thunderstorm, while a train’s going past. You’re begging for the song to be injected into your brain, but you gotta settle for a homeopathic version of it. “Who Fucking Pissed in My Well” takes the Eastern beat from Satanic Majesties, and adds an electronic loop to create another droning psych masterpiece. The sound quality on this song is probably better than any other song off the album. You can actually hear all the instruments, like the organs grooving in the background, and of course the weird Chinese shit. This kind of music is pure bliss. “We Are the Niggers of the World” was supposedly written when Newcombe was 9 years old. Whether you believe it or not, what you can believe is Newcombe has shown that he doesn’t just create repetitive drones with the 50+ instruments he can play; he can actually create a progressive, beautiful piano solo. It’s stark, and it’s gloomy, my only concern is at track 4 there’s already been two 4 minute plus instrumentals, and to a lot of people who can’t handle that much instrumental music, it’s probably killed their buzz. “Who Cares Why” is the BJM’s version of a dub song. Newcombe’s vocals float through drum heavy psych a la Flying Saucer Attack. This is somewhere BJM have never really gone before, and like every genre they take on, they make it their own. “Yeah Yeah” could be either one of the best songs on the album or the biggest let down of the album. It depends on whether or not you’ve heard the live version before. Yes this is another one of those BJM songs that took forever to be released on an album. But with the lackluster production, all the intensity of this song is depleted. Just search Jeff Levits on you tube, and watch the video of him playing with the BJM. He was the guitar player for the Warlocks, but if you hear that version and then the album version, you will understand why this version leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The lyrics may possibly be the most telling of all Newcombe’s songs. The voices of angels sing in my head / they tell me don’t worry I’m already dead / and I say yeah yeah. “Golde-Frost” is pure insanity. It’s the hardest thing the BJM have ever put out, complete with mad Icelandic screaming phrases. There is a DVD also coming out with this release that has a video for each song. The video for this is seizure inducing mayhem. “Just Like Kicking Jesus” is the crown jewel of the album. This is where the My Bloody Valentine part of the album title comes in. Anton borrows the guitars from Soon and turns them into what whales would sound like on ecstasy. Add honey dripping boy girl vocals only to be consumed by electronic dissonance and you have pure heaven. Possibly the most beautiful song the BJM have created. “Ljosmyndir” is spooky in stark organs, and weird Icelandic spoken words. Echoing screams introduce “Automatic Faggot for the People,” a post rock drone that carries on for 8 minutes, and “Dark Wave Driver, Big Drill Car” creates a claustrophobic guitar riff over the sound collage of television and people talking. It’s another Space Age Spaghetti Western cinematic sound the BJM are so great at making. And finally one of those singers Newcombe asks to sing on his records agrees, and we get Mark Gardener, from Ride. “Monkey Powder” rocks on a fat riff, that could be mistaken for BRMC. We end the ride with “Black Hole Symphony,” which is just that, a horrible soul sucking noise that goes on and on for 13 minutes. I’m fairly sure Newcombe just flipped on the mic while someone was buffing the floor upstairs. So after four long years it seems Newcombe has got even darker, and yet there are hints of beauty. In a period where people are so trapped up in their technology Newcombe is using technology to ease our pain. This is another paranoid romp through a world that’s truly scary. I can’t say it lives up to its true potential, because the production quality just doesn’t let the listener connect like they should to the music, and while most BJM albums flow seamlessly from one song to the next, this one bounces around too much like there was no thinking involved in creating a track list. It feels like Newcombe just dragged everything into the play list without looking. There needs to be a balance between the slow dark instrumentals and the actual songs; you can't build up the album to destroy it, to build it up again to go into nothing. It picks up in the middle, then goes flaccid again, then Mark Gardener’s song. The most groovy on the album is the last track. It makes no sense. What I can say, this is the most ambitious, experimental, dark, and driving BJM album, and for it to be their 10th full length album is incredible. Most bands become stagnant after 10 years, not to mention 10 albums. If what Newcombe says is true and he does have 4 other albums in the wing, we may be seeing a second creative wave like the 95-98 era. Let’s hope next time there’s more attention paid to the little things. -Ryan Johnston Elsewhere BJM website Published : April, 2008.