Anton Newcombe is making less and less sense. But that’s … OK. I mean, okay. I mean, you know, I’m dealing with it, his obsession with releasing things with only a few new goodies to offer and a lot of flash and shimmer.
Smoking Acid is the perfect example of outlandish indie entrepreneurship. It’s a double-album vinyl platter. The first record is a nice, full pink.
The second is bright-bright-bright florescent green, dotted on one side, pentagram’d on the other (with letters that probably represent something in between), and contains no music whatsoever. A nice prop I suppose, but when I saw two question marks on the record jacket next to Side 3 and Side 4 I envisioned a nuts-out experimental second LP.
I didn’t get it. I’m still happy though; that pink slab I mentioned is a fierce reminder of BJM’s unlimited powers as a rock ‘n’ roll dynasty.
“A Serious Matter”sets shit off with a stark, guitar-driven tone that takes the dope-dipped drone of My Bloody Underground and drops it down a notch while clearing away some of the studio cobwebs.
The guitar delivery of “Matter” is stunning, sludgy enough to engulf the ear but defined enough to lock into and onto, and the vocals swoop in and almost steal the show. If you thought Newcombe was too old and worn to whoop, you were sorely mistaken mofo’s.
And if you throw fruit or heckle during a BJM performance you’re a shiftless cunt. ”I Alvoru Talao” follows and is exactly the same as “A Serious Matter,” with different vocals in a different language. Whatever’s clever I guess.
Things get really weird on Side B of the first record. We’re talking a completely different ballgame with different players, new rules and tubbier umpires. This isn’t even rock ‘n’ roll by Radiohead‘s standards. The beats are crispy, complemented by a host of melodic elements and samples, more redolent of a Thievery Corporation composition than something from a band boasting three or more guitarists.
And this isn’t Max Cavalera-dabbling-in-Dead-Can-Dance-tribute; this material is much more natural than the standard, run-of-the-mill dalliance. Needless to say, the whole package coheres as naturally as if it were a straight-ahead “rock” experiment. Newcombe is still restless after all these years, perhaps showing a split personality with the completely separate sides — not to mention the useless-but-pretty second LP; what the eff?.
This is skitter-hop, a division of instrumental hip-hop with a glitter, come-hither sensation to it. It’s not something I would want over the course of an entire album, but confined as it is to a side of vinyl, I find myself more impressed at the fearlessness of the duality presented here.
Newcombe adds vocals to the final of the three (the first two are called “Tempo 116.7″ with different subtitles) songs, “Super Fucked,” without a hint of the awkward, as if adding vocals overtop of electronic beat music weren’t one of the toughest tasks to tackle in indie-rock (seriously, how many times have groups failed to match beats and samples with vocal prowess? Caribou is one of the only artists to succeed in this category circa Newcombe) …
It’s all effortless for this guy, and it’s even more effortless for me to throw caution into the wind and nab a copy of just about every BJM record I can get my dirty, sticky hands on.
Stay tuned for a review of Just Like Kicking Jesus, the blue-and-yellow-marble LP Brian Jonestown Massacre — and its frontman, Anton Newcombe — released in 2008. So I’m a little late, sue me …
