Brian Jonestown Massacre - Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? (2009)

Review By Chris Familton

Want a history lesson of British music of the last forty years? Well take a journey with Anton Newcombe and his band of merry men The Brian Jonestown Massacre on their new album "Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?". It could just be their most realised album to date and also one of their most adventurous.

There are clues to the bigger themes of celebrity, religion and the power of music in the title and artwork - featuring the head of Jesus with a crown of thorns. Newcombe is asking a question that I suspect is a rhetorical one for his musical answer is no-one, the spirit of the music that Lennon & Co created didn’t die it merely bled into the minds of nearly every musician since and manifested itself in their own creative output.

To prove his point Newcombe takes us on a double decker bus ride through UK music. Tempo 116.7 is a gloriously downbeat rehash of Primal Scream in their "Screamadelica" guise. Let’s Go F**king Mental updates Happy Mondays with a dash of Blur at their intentionally dumbest. This Is The First Of Your Last Warning is PiL filtered through New Zealand’s Headless Chickens and This Is The One Thing We Did Not Want To Happen only barely avoids the definition of a cover version with its Joy Division replication.

Though the references are plenty the drive and artistic dragon-chasing of Newcombe is the thing that ties it all together. The elements of drone and his use of washes of sound are what characterises The Brian Jonestown Massacre. He can pull together layers of instruments and voices that intertwine and form a dense and floating sound.

Always open to anything that will improve the song Newcombe takes a primitive and heavy hip-hop beat in Someplace Else Unknown, adds his best Bobby Gillespie impersonation and some writhing, irritable guitars to create a hypnotic and mildly disconcerting experience.

Dekta! Dekta! Dekta! is the red herring on the album, wrongly placed and just a step too far outside the mood of the rest of the record. It sounds like a Germanic oompah band. Maybe it will endear itself on further listens but initially it disrupts the flow of the album.

Late in the piece the gorgeous Our Time reveals itself as a slow swaying kraut-pop jangle gem like a lost Flying Nun demo from 80s Dunedin. The sweetness of the fuzz and the Sonic Youth meandering guitar lines make it the perfect hazy summer song.

Feel It rounds things out, starting like Kiss’ I Was Made For Lovin’ You before it starts to gather momentum and grows into the closest thing a guitar band can get to dance music. Newcombe bottles the syncopation and the circular motion of the music to the point where it will surely be an epic live track that will keep rolling and swirling into the night.

Newcombe attempts to bring the themes of the album together on the sampled final track with its forlorn music and quotes from Lennon’s infamous Bigger Than God comments and a fantastically accented Northern English girl. It is the obvious tie in to the album title but it works beautifully in the way that Mogwai used Iggy Pop on Punk Rock.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre will never attain commercial success but they are fast becoming one of the most fascinating and influential bands of the last 20 years. "Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?" consolidates their influences and Newcombe has again proven that his erratic behavior is justified (or at least tolerated) in the name of great art.

RATING: 4 out of 5

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