Review Summary: Third World Pyramid finds the once chaotic Brian Jonestown Massacre locking further into their psychedelic groove.
For a long time The Brian Jonestown Massacre ran like a run-away train: carriages would detach and new ones join, they would veer towards commercial success and a major label deal before suddenly carooming off sharply down a new path. All the while steered by mercurial frontman Anton Newcombe: musical genius and creative lightning rod, at the mercy of his own personal demons, liable to boot off any passengers who disagreed with his all-encompassing vision.
The train finally seemed as if it had settled onto a steady track with the release of 2014’s Revelation. The first Brian Jonestown Massacre album to be fully recorded and produced in Newcombe’s studio in Berlin - where he now lives with his wife, having reportedly tamed the drug and alcohol addictions that once plagued him - it's a triumphant tour through lushly deailed psych-pop and cinematic atmospherics.
If Revelation marked a new chapter in the career of Anton Newcombe and a creative renewal of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s sound, then 2016’s Third World Pyramid shows the band locking further into their new-found groove, eschewing pop sensibilities in favour of deeper explorations of the various leftfield influences they've combined to weave their rich psychedelic tapestry.
The centrepiece of the album (or the tip of the pyramid, if you like) is the sprawling Assignment Song: a weary shimmering epic that layers countless guitars, cosmic synth sound effects, woodwind instruments and gospel-like vocals. It’s the kind of track that opens in unassuming fashion and once you’re in it, it’s hard to orientate yourself. The layers build up subtly and rather than going for the cliched crescendo, the track gradually disassembles itself as elegantly as it began.
Elsewhere, the aptly titled Lunar Surf Graveyard sounds exactly as you’d expect and to try and describe it further would be a disservice to such an illustrative title. The haunting Oh Bother is like a Western soundtrack, evoking images of horsemen riding through a canyon at dusk. Even more haunting is opening track Good Mourning, which has a sombre Medieval vibe reminiscent of All Tomorrow’s Parties, by
The Velvet Underground. It features Newcombe’s wife Katy on vocals and the lyrics can only be heard as a lament of her lover’s addictions: ‘First you’re happy, then you’re ill’ and a plea not to let them overwhelm him: ‘There’s more to life than trying to die’. It was an exceptionally bold choice to open the album and will certainly deter any uncommitted listeners.
Third World Pyramid sounds very much like the sound of a band in control, and overall that is surely a good thing (for Anton and everyone else’s mental health, if nothing else). But it does mean there is none of the riotous energy of earlier albums like Take it from the Man! and Give it Back!. For all his flaws, Anton Newcombe has never been an artist to shy away from bearing his soul and on early albums you can hear the naked fragility in his voice on songs like This is why you love me.
That sense of vulnerability does appear on one track, Like Describing Colours to a Blind Man on Acid, which sounds like a metaphor for attemping to do something very difficult. Aside from the more professional production, it could be straight off Give it Back! - in fact it does sound uncannily like This is why you love me. But hey, when you’ve recorded more than 20 albums it’s not surprising some of the songs bear some similarities.
--
Attribution: http://georgetown5000.com/2020/10/23/20-10-20-this-week-i-have-been-mostly-listening-to/
