My Bloody Underground
Anton Newcombe likes his music to be confrontational. He wants a reaction. From his band’s cheeky name to the even more controversial titles included on this 2008 release (“Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills’ Wooden Peg (Dropping Bombs on the White House),” and “Just Like Kicking Jesus” aren’t even the most offensive titles included), Newcombe is out for a full-frontal assault. His band’s rough, raw, unapologetic garage rock swims in the drone of psychedelia that recalls the Velvet Underground, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Fall, Julian Cope, Can and any number of faceless groups from the lo-fi past that appeared on Nuggets and Pebbles compilations of lost garage rock. The band tunes up at the beginning of “Infinite Wisdom Tooth” for that audio verite moment and by the eight minute “Who Cares Why” the deliberately murky production accentuates the menace. The rhythms turn to trances and the overall effect is subliminal. Like second-hand smoke wafting up from the basement, the music emerges from a dark, dank place that would perfectly compliment a low budget horror movie.
Given its title, it's fitting that this self-produced record attempts to emulate both the gauzy atmospherics of My Bloody Valentine and the sparse efficiency of the Velvet Underground.
A ludicrously talented one-off, we need more artists like Newcombe to entertain, challenge and inspire us. His 13th album under the Brian Jonestown Massacre banner is no exception.
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Billed as BJM's most avant-garde statement to date, My Bloody Underground delivers psychedelic thrills in spades, together with some of Anton Newcombe's most challenging compositions yet.
The history of the infamous San Francisco neo-psychedelic rock collective known as the Brian Jonestown Massacre is a cluster-fuck of drug abuse, tumultuous...