It's an understatement to say Newport Beach-born and -raised Anton Newcombe, Brian Jonestown Massacre's founder and sole constant member, has an image to live up to as well as overcome. Since being captured in aspic (by the film Dig!), he has followed his muse all over the world, leaving numerous MySpace bulletins about the miserable state of the world. But Newcombe's core goal remains the same—compose, record, release, perform—and with My Bloody Underground (a simultaneous nod to his early inspirations My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain), he has released one of his better efforts.
Newcombe's embrace of a shambling ramalama of rough psychedelic celebration—still his raison d'être after a hesitant start with the band's earliest releases—comes to the fore on many of Underground's tracks. Percussion sets a steady, ritualistic tone that the interweaving of guitars and many other elements emphasizes rather than drowns out, but in his vocal delivery, he seems to have found a new sense of relative calm, often singing in a understatedly serene voice (shown to fine effect on the verses of “Yeah-Yeah”). This isn't new for him, but rarely has it been as prominent as it is here.
Newcombe's often-outrageous penchant for pushing buttons whenever possible remains intact, as witnessed by such provocatively titled tracks as “Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' Wooden Peg [Dropping Bombs on the White House],”, “Automatic Faggot for the People” and “Just Like Kicking Jesus.” It's almost as if they're cover for the music (definitely in the case of the blissed-out shoegaze joyousness of the latter track), where angry energy tempers the sound but never overwhelms its sense of aiming for exultation in performance.
