Daily Jam - Wisdom

Here's a great early track from Brian Jonestown Massacre for your Tuesday afternoon.  Listen to "Wisdom" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Reign On

I have been writing this blog for a while now, and it’s come as kind of surprise to me how many “favorite” songs I have. They keep coming to me week after week, seemingly with no end in sight. That being said, I sometimes feel like I’m repeating myself, some posts being bathed in a loving, nostalgic hue, others focused on a more cultural significance, and some just meandering off into their own inconsequential tangents.

And so, I’m not really sure what to say about “Reign On,” the stark, sorrowful, and beautiful standout from The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 1999 EP Bringing It All Back Home – Again. Featuring lead vocals from Miranda Lee Richards, the song is a folky, haunting psychedelic swoon, the audio equivalent of watching ghosts vanish in the desert dust. It’s gorgeous and it continually commands my attention, but I don’t have any kind of deep connection to it, nor is it probably ever going to make waves across the pop music landscape.

So, inconsequential tangent it is!

I’ve always had kind of a strained relationship with The Brian Jonestown Massacre, a completely internal struggle pitting my love for the band’s music against their potentially aggravating live performances, lead man Anton Newcombe’s frazzled psyche the source of much inspired genius as well as many an onstage meltdown. The first time I saw the band perform, he took increasingly excruciating long amounts of time in between each song fussing around with his guitar, or his amplifier, or his band mates’ equipment. And each time, the crowd grew more and more audibly frustrated until the inevitable heckling began.

“I need more vocals in my monitor!”

Newcombe began to spit back, and eventually the venue pulled the plug before things escalated. You could sense bottles about to be hurled.

Scenes like this were all too common for the band for years and years, drug addiction, mental illness, and intra-band turmoil spilling out into clubs and performance halls all over the country. They made it hard to like them, Anton Newcombe in particular. But then I’d re-listen to a song or an album and instantly fall for them again. I always come crawling back.

In later years, it seems like the man and the band have begun to level out, my last live encounter with them being a fantastic show, the group warm, engaged, and on point. The prolific stream of releases and non-stop touring has finally given us the band we all wanted, needed, and deserved all along.

Reign on.

Daily Jam - Fucker

How's your day been?  Mine has sucked so far.  Here's the Brian Jonestown Massacre with "Fucker," our Daily Jam.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

The Brian Jonestown Massacre release their albums with such little fanfare that i always miss them, as was the case with last March's new self-titled album.  Years and years ago, i caught them live and it was a disaster, Anton Newcombe being so far up his own ass and an increasingly hostile crowd making for a highly volatile atmosphere that eventually forced the venue to turn on the lights and cut the show short.  But i've seen them since, and it seems that Newcombe has maybe mellowed a little bit with age, or maybe got his medications right, and it's a whole different experience, an alt-rock and psych elder statesmen playing his massive discography for the masses.  Anyway, the new record is a little more straightforward than some of his previous output, drawing on psych rock, shoegaze, and more.  Listen to "We Never Had a Chance" below and download the album here.

L’epée

Anton Newcombe and Brian Jonestown Massacre have been doing psych rock right for almost 30 years, and now he's teamed up with French duo The Limiñanas to form a new band called L’epée.  Check out the project's new song "Dreams," a short nugget of fuzz and groove, and order the 12" single here.

SQÜRL remixed by Anton Newcombe

Jim Jarmusch's music project SQÜRL is releasing their new record, "EP #260" later this month on Sacred Bones, but in the meantime, Brian Jonestown Massacre maniac Anton Newcombe has tackled remixing the band's "Gates of Ishtar."  Newcombe's version crawls and oozes at nine and a half minutes long, sounding like some dark and menacing harbinger of encroaching doom.  Add Tess Parks' beautiful vocals to the mix and you get something all at once haunting and transcendent.  Listen below.

Black Lizard

Helsinki band Black Lizard are releasing a self-titled compilation album on Austin's SpiderChild Records.  The cassette pulls tracks from the band's Anton Newcombe produced debut EP, the follow-up LP and a new, unreleased jam called "Suicide and Other Drugs."  It's a smoky, hazy mix of psych rock and shoegaze, a brain melting good time.  Listen below and snag the cassette here.

Tess Parks and Anton Newcombe

Toronto psych/folk/etc. singer-songwriter Tess Parks recently teamed up with Brian Jonestown Massacre casualty/resident crazy person Anton Newcombe for an album of drone-drenched, mind-expanding, psych rock journeys through your stereo.  Get "I Declare Nothing" from Cargo Records and listen to an early version of album track "Wehmut" below.