Thursday, December 20, 2012

5) Aufheben - Brian Jonestown Massacre (TOP 20 OF 2012)










Aufheben 

Brian Jonestown Massacre
A Records.


It’s to the credit of Anton Newcombe’s fleeting genius that every wildly divergent Brian Jonestown Massacre record has been worthy of at least some consideration. Rebounding off of 2010’s Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?, in which signs of life were increasingly tough to find or take comfort in, Aufheben has the renewed energy of a band’s second era. Like The Cure’s The Head On the Door or Mogwai’s Happy Songs For Happy People, Brian Jonestown Massacre’s twelfth full-length officially subverts the band’s old reputation by consolidating influences Newcombe once wore on-sleeve and instating them as smooth gears of the BJM Sound 2.0. Judged on the merits of “Blue Order New Monday”, an unsurprising but bold entry into new wave’s dance-y corridors, and “Face Down On the Moon”, a flute-leading instrumental replete with eastern accoutrements, Aufheben makes virtually no sense. But taken as a mind-expanding whole, Brian Jonestown Massacre’s latest ushers a journey as deliberately narcotic and bewildering as anything they’ve done before, stepping confidently into a mystical rebirth.


No comments: