The Brian Jonestown Massacre deliver an anthemic slice of psychedelia on ‘The Future Is Your Past’
Anton Newcombe’s musical project, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, has always been a prolific force of creativity. Since forming in 1990, he and his ever-revolving door of bandmates have released 19 albums, with their 20th effort, The Future Is Your Past, arriving on February 10th. While the back end of the 1990s saw Newcombe’s band share seven albums, their releases during the 2000s were a little more sporadic. However, over the past decade, The Brian Jonestown Massacre has been on a roll. They have released some of their best work since the ’90s, such as 2014’s Revelation. On the eve of the newest record hitting the shelves, Newcombe proves that he is far from slowing down.
The Future Is Your Past was born out of a particularly fruitful creative period for Newcombe. After struggling with writer’s block, he penned ‘The Real’, which appears on 2022’s Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees, the first of the two albums Newcombe wrote during this period. “All of a sudden, I just heard something. And then it just didn’t stop. We tracked a whole song every single day for 70 days in a row,” he explained. “I felt like everything was so sad and hopeless, but I am not helpless. I decided to sing anthems to empower me, to remember, to fight the beast until it dies, to give it everything you got because that’s all there is to give…these were not songs for covid times, for these times of war and crisis after crisis, these are songs for all time.”
The new record maintains this ethos with its timeless sound, sitting somewhere between the 1960s, 1990s, and the present day. Over the years, Newcombe has drawn from psychedelia, classic rock ‘n’ roll, shoegaze, blues and pop, and The Future Is Your Past feels like the perfect combination of these genres. The record moves between anthemic singalongs, cyclical rhythms and jangling guitars – sometimes all in the space of one song.
Opening with ‘Do Rainbows Have Ends’, an optimistic psychedelic tune, Newcombe sings: “Give it all you’ve got/ It’s the only way to live”. However, the album quickly segues into one of its standout moments, ‘Nothing Can Stop The Sound’, where the repetitive krautrock-inspired instrumentation is interrupted by a pop-inspired hook that is instantly addictive.
The song utilises a stop-start rhythm that Newcombe uses on other tracks, such as ‘The Light is About to Change’, giving listeners a short break before pummelling back into lucid action. On ‘Fudge’, which begins with a distinctively mellow sound before picking up speed, Newcombe once again injects his lyrics with welcoming positivity in the face of difficulty, singing: “It’s a new day/ So we fight on…”
Another album highlight is ‘The Mother of All Fuckers’, which, aside from its fantastic name, contains excellent rolling drums that upkeep the track’s intensity. ‘Your Mind is My Cafe’, meanwhile, is a memorable slice of psych-pop goodness, its mesmerising guitars evoking a bright summer’s day.
Newcombe’s newest project will be an instant pleaser for all existing fans of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, although its cheery guitars, beautiful melodies and psychedelic rhythms are sure to entice new fans. With The Future Is Your Past, Newcombe reminds us of his importance as an underground hero that has consistently worked authentically. He puts it best himself: “Nobody can stop me, I’m not asking somebody, I’m not making the rounds at Warners, saying ‘please put out my record!’ It’s just for me.”
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