Album Review: My Bloody Underground by The Brian Jonestown Massacre

After a four year hiatus (with the exception of a five-song EP in 2005) and another lineup change, Brian Jonestown Massacre take their sound full circle returning to the shoegazer roots that prompted the band to make their first album Methodrone. My Bloody Underground takes cues from two of the most important and influential bands of their respective eras, My Bloody Valentine and Velvet Underground, just as the title suggests, as well as Julian Cope's My Nation Underground. Noise pop and neo-psychedelia are the most notable sources for Anton Newcombe's new music, and after eight albums and a handful of EPs, his rekindled interest in bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain keeps his songs from sounding redundant.

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I love it when bands shoot themselves in their collective feet with accusatory or judgmental song titles that could easily be applied to their own albums and/or states of creative being. In the case of Anton Newcombe, the extraordinarily dysfunctional head of neo-psych band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, he asks us,"Who Fucking Pissed In My Well?" Anton, honestly, it was probably you. The onstage personification of a Jerry Springer episode gone right, Newcombe has made his mark as a self-destructive and self-obsessed figure of over-developed conceit.

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Considering what Anton Newcombe has been through, it’s good to see he hasn’t lost his twisted sense of humour, if that’s what you call kicking off what’s meant to be a Brian Jonestown Massacre comeback album with a track titled Bring Me The Head Of Paul McCartney On Heather Mills’ Wooden Peg (Bomb The White House). Unfortunately, the distorto psych drone doesn’t live up to its promising title. In fact, everything on My Bloody Underground suffers from Newcombe’s chronic lack of focus, leaving the entire mess sounding like half-assed sonic sketches farted out in a friend’s basement over a woozy weekend.

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