Published on Aug 4, 1998
When I first heard of the San Francisco-based group Brian
Jonestown Massacre, I imagined the group’s sound to be a rather
wild, even punkish, form of rock. Just the name of the Anton
Newcombe-led group conjured up images of uncontrolled fury – why
else merge the name of the late Rolling Stones guitarist with one
of the worst mass suicides ever seen?
Boy, imagine my surprise when I first popped this disc in the
player. The 13 songs on their latest release,
Strung Out In Heaven, were hardly the uncontrolled panic I
expected. If anything, Newcombe and this loosely-grouped
collaborative of musicians have taken the sound of the
Let It Bleed-era Stones and brought it into 1998…
damn.
Oh, it’s not that the music contained on this disc is terrible;
Brian Jonestown Massacre does capture the sound and essence of the
music rather well. Tracks like “Going To Hell,” “Wasting Away” and
“Love” all capture the attention of the listener in a very positive
manner. The contributions from bandmates Matt Hollywood, Jeffrey
Davies, Joel Gion and Dean Taylor all positively contribute to this
project.
So where can I be disappointed in
Strung Out In Heaven? Two areas, really. First, while the
capturing of the Stones-like sound is admirable (especially putting
an alternative spin on it), Newcombe and crew rarely deviate from
that formula on this album, making many of the songs blur together
in an almost unrecognizable mish-mash. Make sure you’re watching
the CD player, or you might have a hard time keeping track of when
“Spun” ends and “I’ve Been Waiting” begins.
Second, in their effort to capture an older sound on this album,
it almost feels like Brian Jonestown Massacre have given up their
own individuality – something I don’t think was the original
intention. Newcombe’s mirror of the ’60s sound, down to the vocal
sneer a la Mick Jagger, makes this feel more like a collection of
Stones outtakes than a modern-day band’s most recent effort. Had
the band injected a little more of their own sound to this project,
I think things would have been radically different for the
better.
Does this mean that there is no originality on this album? I
didn’t say that; you can hear glimpses of where the band members
inject their own flavor into the mix. All I am suggesting is that
more of that flavor should have been included on this album to give
it its own unique style, not just a ’60s-sounding effort that
happens to be alternative rock.
Again, it’s not that
Strung Out In Heaven is a bad album; no, it’s an enjoyable
listen that should attract fans of a few different genres. But in
this case, instead of looking backwards into the future, Newcombe
and crew would have been better suited keeping the car out of
“reverse”.