Brian Jonestown Massacre

There was a lovely album that was an imaginary soundtrack – and it was also (pretty much) an Anton Newcombe solo album. So, you get the feeling, that this one (somewhere between an album and an EP as its wishy-washy but also strangely matter-of-fact title implies) rushed out at the end of 2015 was perhaps planned as a quick bit of tour-related product. The band had a 25^th Anniversary tour and so some new recordings were probably the order of the day…

And this is still something of a Newcombe-compiled/created album; mostly songs he’s worked up or borrowed (a cover of antecedents, The 13^th Floor Elevators). When other Jonestowners weren’t around he found decent subs (Alex Mass from The Black Angels pops in) or wrote some more tunes with all-around muse, Tess Parks.

None of this puts me off Thiny Wingy by the way – I think it’s perfect, seven songs, 34 minutes; I get what I need from this.

Opener, Pish, is the scene-setter, that long, loping groove (you wonder just how they manage this nearly-soporific churn by the time you hear it all over again on Leave It Alone).

But you get what you need when these guys try sometimes…Get Some has psychedelic 60s all over it (as does Leave It Alone). Mandrake Handshake has a similar feeling that The Clean manage when they evoke the sixties in their bedraggled instrumentals; fittingly when the Jonestown does it here it’s sixties stoner-grooves via the Flying Nun appropriation.

And then to closer, Here Comes The Waiting For The Sun, the latest in a long line of shaggy-dog titles that come from taking a couple of key sixties elements and pushing them together: that formula has always worked for the music made (and usually – with an added comedy element – for the titles). This time around there’s a fuzziness that takes in some Middle Eastern and Brazilian musics; casts wider than just late-60s-period Stones and Beatles and the early 90s shoegazer radar-blips.