Back when the Brian Jonestown Massacre became the newest Next Big Thing-- releasing albums at the rate of Bob Pollard powered by Red Bull, flirting with interested record labels of varying liquidity, engaging in slapfights with the Dandy Warhols and fistfights with bandmates-- the myth and mystique surrounding the group all but drowned out its songs. All the while, frontman Anton Newcombe wanted people to believe he was a burgeoning genius bucking the establishment, a tortured outcast inspired by and continuing the work begun by his spiritual forefathers from the 1960s, including one or both of the guys whose names or notorious actions were jacked for use in Newcombe's little beat combo.
With every subsequent release, however, the myth gave way to a less flattering portrait. Although Newcombe was talented enough to skillfully synthesize all sorts of musical touchstones, the end results were increasingly less inspiring, and his tendency to take decent ideas and beat them into the ground was maddening-- Newcombe never failed to take what could be a perfectly fine three-minute song and turn it into an interminable seven-minute dirge. Couple those aesthetic shortcomings with Newcombe's penchant for burning bridges and buying into his own out-of-proportion hype, and it's no wonder that the group quickly became yesterday's news. Ironically, Brian Jonestown Massacre's most public moment came courtesy of the 2004 documentary Dig!, with the film's unflattering portrayal of Newcombe and the group's overwrought inner turmoil showing exactly why the group would never become as big as Newcombe thought they should be. Undaunted, Newcombe and whomever he can sucker into joining his merry band soldier on, releasing records, playing out, causing the occasional ruckus. If the hope is to return to those salad days of potential world domination, lackluster albums like My Bloody Underground aren't going to help the cause.
Given its title, it's fitting that the self-produced My Bloody Underground attempts to emulate both the gauzy atmospherics of My Bloody Valentine and the sparse efficiency of the Velvet Underground. Instead, the album often sounds more like a poorly recorded group of proficient amateurs giving it a go on fourth-hand guitars and some empty paint buckets, with the singer warbling through a pillow for good measure. The album's lead track (the name of which I'll get to later on) starts with a promising beat, but gets sideswiped not three seconds in by the intrusion of the meandering psychedelic guitar mangling one might stereotypically expect from a group beholden to that forever-romanticized era of free love. After six minutes of that, there's an electrified version of the same pointless stumble that lasts just as long. Most of the album offers variations on this sort of unending drone-- "Who Fucking Pissed in My Well?" is a non-vocal synth-driven take, "Just Like Kicking Jesus" goes the MBV seasick route, "Who Cares Why" sends the drone out into orbit, and the album's percussion-free conclusion is fittingly titled "Black Hole Symphony". Oddly enough, despite being the longest track on the entire record, it's probably the most palatable.
The songs that avoid this sonic quicksand aren't worth much, either-- successes like the haunting "Ljosmyndir" and refreshingly aggressive "Golden - Frost" are few and far between. Instead, there's "Yeah - Yeah", a haze-free number where Newcombe's usually submerged vocals take center stage to offer a litany of ridiculous couplets. There's also a pleasant enough piano instrumental, supposedly written by Newcombe when he was nine years old, that soon overstays its welcome. And in case the album couldn't be any more obnoxious, the title of this track is "We Are the Niggers of the World".
More so than the album's overall malaise and inconsistency, it's this ridiculous (and in some cases, offensive) attempt at "edginess" that's most off-putting. Stunts like naming the album's first track "Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Peg (Dropping Bombs on the White House)", or calling one of Underground's high points "Automatic Faggot for the People" are the sort of look-at-me tactics that one would hope would be beneath a 40-year-old. They're also better reserved for music that doesn't sound like canon-beholden Mojo bait. Watching the videos Newcombe and friends posted to YouTube to accompany a leak of Underground tracks near the end of 2007-- Newcombe spray-painting corny epithets on hallways, Newcombe wrecking and burning all sorts of crap in a forced pique of Keith Moonian splendor, Newcombe getting the word ISLAND tattooed inside his lower lip-- only exacerbates how silly and self-indulgent his half-assed attempts at artistic martyrdom are, and have been. The myth of the Brian Jonestown Massacre-- a construct that holds weight only with the hopelessly converted-- has always superseded and surpassed the actual work of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Even now, when that myth is but a shadow of its former glory, that still holds true.
