The Fat Angel Sings

Anton Newcombe frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, force of nature – returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 19th full-length studio album “Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees”, released on 24th June 2022 on his own label A Recordings. 

It is 30 years since the release of their first single “She Made Me / Evergreen”. Released in 1992, as the British music press descended on the US to anoint the next great US guitar band as the flavour of the month, Anton Newcombe had an idea: say no. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn’t a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself, and he had observed in silent horror as his peers meekly acquiesced to everything. But he was different. Anton Newcombe was going to say no to everything. “I just knew I would be more successful in a certain way by saying no, just being contrary because I figured that if people liked me they were gonna like me anyway,” he says. “Or dislike me. It doesn’t matter.”

Brian Jonestown Massacre’s shoegazing-tinged debut classic album “Methodrone” was released in 1995 and since then numerous band members have joined Newcombe on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant, the creative mastermind at the centre of one of music’s most fascinating bands. There has been a further 18 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre since then, each embarking on their own mind-expanding adventure and exploring the outer realms of rock’n’roll; psychedelic rock, country-blues, snarling rock’n’roll, blissed-out noise-pop and more.

Along the way, Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent who saw the direction in which mainstream indie-rock was heading and opted to take the long way round. He’s emerged as a revolutionary force in modern music, an underground hero. There was no other way, this was how it had to be. “My only option with everything in life has always been that you just jump into the fire,” he declares. “It doesn’t matter what it is.”

He’s hopped around the globe, from the West Coast to New York, from Manhattan to Iceland, and then to Berlin, where he’s lived for 14 years and has two flats, one to live in and one that’s been converted into his studio. He goes there six days a week to work and write and record and produce and it’s where the fantastic new BJM album “Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees” was made. In an era where one band bleeds into the next and production all seems to be pulling from a similarly beige-y sonic palette, here is a record that crackles with excitement and possibility, the fuzz of those 60s Ampeg amps, the exhilarating swirl of guitars and keyboards and Newcombe conducting the chaos.

“Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees” is the beginning of a thrilling new phase for Newcombe and his band. Joining him in the studio for this album were Ricky Maymi (guitars), Ryan Carlson Van Kriedt (keyboards), Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar), Hallberg Daði Hallbergsson (bass), Uri Rennert (drums) and Sara Neidorf (drums).

After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer’s block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar in the studio and album opener and lead single “The Real” came out of him. Like the kraken, it was as if he’d summoned it. “All of a sudden, I just heard something,” he says. “And then it just didn’t stop. We tracked a whole song every single day for 70 days in a row.”

Four minutes into “Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees”, there are two lines that sum up its fearless spirit. “Fight the beast until it dies, raise your sword up to the sky!”, sings Newcombe as an explosion of fuzzy guitars, thrumming organs and rolling drums collide around him. As soon as Newcombe wrote it, he knew “The Real” had to open the new album. “That line is like fantasyland!” he laughs. “It’s the little kid in me, full on St George shit. It’s as much a declaration of anything that I could ever muster. A lot of the album is about the affirmation by just living. Existentially, this time period, has felt pretty dark so it’s about fighting the good fight. I’m singing to empower other people.

These are songs fuelled with the heady feeling of capturing a moment – from the hot-footed country sway of “It’s About Being Free” Really to the hazy grooves of “What’s In A Name“, from the garage stomp of “Silenced” to the widescreen 60s-pop of “Wait A Minute” (2:30 To Be Exact). Nothing was pre-written. Like “The Real”, everything was conjured up by where an instrument took Newcombe when he picked it up. “I could sit at the piano, the organ, any instrument, and get an idea all of a sudden. I would play for one second with the band to get a grasp of the idea, and then we would unplug the amps and put on the headphones, plug in and track it. Then I would go, ‘guys leave the room’, sing the words in my head and then record them.

“Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees” is a brilliant album, but there is no such thing as a defining statement in Anton Newcombe’s world anymore, just more chapters that contribute to the tale. “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,” he says. He hopes he can be an inspiration to others. “I would love to see more groups, people playing music in the UK and everywhere else because I really enjoy it. That’s the only reason I need. It’s the only reason to do stuff.” That hits to the core of what makes Anton Newcombe and Brian Jonestown Massacre tick in 2022.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are currently on a 38-date tour of the US and will be announcing a European tour soon.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre will release Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, their nineteenth album, on June 24 via founder Anton Newcombe’s A Recordings. This is the BJM’s first album in three years, a long time for the very prolific group, though Anton regularly shares work-in-progress songs via his YouTube channel.

“The Real,” which opens the album, was the first song he composed after period of writer’s block. “All of a sudden, I just heard something,” Anton says. “And then it just didn’t stop. We tracked a whole song every single day for 70 days in a row.” He also says he knew “The Real” had to be the first song when he wrote the lyric “Fight the beast until it dies, raise your sword up to the sky.” “That line is like fantasyland! It’s the little kid in me, full on St. George shit. It’s as much a declaration of anything that I could ever muster. A lot of the album is about affirmation by just living. Existentially, this time period has felt pretty dark, so it’s about fighting the good fight. I’m singing to empower other people.

First of all, I’m getting whatever I need out of it, but I can see it as something other people can identify with.”

With its swirling organs and crashing drums “The Real” is some Grade-A BJM-style psych. You can listen to that and its b-side, the dreamy “Where Do We Go From Here?,” 

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

We cannot wait for Record Store Day 2022, the party that’s become the Largest Single Day Music Event in The World. In celebration of the 15th annual celebration, we are thrilled to announce the “L.A. Woman Sessions“, which is being released as a limited-edition 4-LP set on April 23rd.

On a slate chalk board, Jim wrote the words “A Clean Slate,” as to define the moment.

Hear the progression of each song on “L.A. Woman” as it developed in the studio. Includes the original demo of “Riders On The Storm” newly remixed from the original multitrack session tapes. Previously only available on CD as part of the “L.A. Woman 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition“.

The Doors had crammed several lifetimes into just five years as band, and by late 1970, the psychic toll of Jim Morrison’s addiction and legal hassles threatened to overwhelm the group. Any attempts at making an album under these conditions should have met with unmitigated disaster, but on “L.A. Woman” the final Doors LP released during Morrison’s lifetime the band succeeded almost in spite of themselves. Self-produced and recorded in their private rehearsal space, the album was a homecoming in both a musical and spiritual sense. “Our last record turned out like our first album: raw and simple,” drummer John Densmore reflected in his autobiography. “It was as if we had come full circle. Once again we were a garage band, which is where rock & roll started.”

Morrison left on an extended trip to Paris as the final mixes were being prepared, hoping to rediscover his muse in the City of Light. He would never return: The singer died there in July 1971. As his final recorded work with the Doors turns 45, here are some surprising facts about the creation of “L.A. Woman“.

“L. A. Woman” got off to an inauspicious start in November 1970, when the band played their new material for producer Paul Rothchild. They possessed only a handful of semi-complete tunes, and Rothchild was less than impressed. He dismissed “Riders on the Storm” as “cocktail music,” but reserved particular scorn for “Love Her Madly,” which he cited as the song that drove him out of the studio. “The material was bad, the attitude was bad, the performance was bad,” he said in the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive. “After three days of listening I said, ‘That’s it!’ on the talk-back and cancelled the session.”

They convened for an emergency meeting at a nearby Chinese restaurant, and Rothchild laid his cards on the table. “I said, ‘Look, I think it sucks. I don’t think the world wants to hear it. It’s the first time I’ve ever been bored in a recording studio in my life. I want to go to sleep.’” With that, the so-called “Fifth Door,” who had produced the band since their debut, walked out. Once the shock had worn off, the Doors turned to engineer Bruce Botnick, whose credits included all of their previous albums, as well as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed. With his help, the reinvigorated band vowed to coproduce their new album. Gone were the days of Rothchild’s studio strictness, where it was normal to record 30 takes or spend hours on perfecting a drum sound. “Rothchild was gone, which is one reason why we had so much fun,” Robbie Krieger told Guitar World in 1994. “The warden was gone.”

Eschewing the high tech luxury of Sunset Sound, the Doors decided to record in their unassuming “workshop” at 8512 Santa Monica Boulevard. “It was the room we had rehearsed in forever,” recalled John Densmore in the documentary Mr. Mojo Risin. “Our music was seeped into the walls. We were very comfortable. It was home.” Like a fraternity common room, the cramped space was littered with empty beer bottles, dog-eared magazines, an endless tangle of cables and assorted instruments – plus a jukebox and pinball machine. “It was tight,” says Botnick, who was ensconced in the upstairs office behind a portable mixing board. “It was like sardines.” 

During takes, Morrison would grab his gold Electrovoice 676-G stage mic and sing in the adjoining bathroom, which served as a provisional vocal booth. The room’s tile provided impressive natural acoustics, and he ripped the door off its hinges to better commune with his bandmates. The building has changed hands several times since the Doors recorded there, but its most recent incarnation – a bar, appropriately – paid tribute to the sessions with a plaque in the bathroom stall.

The cartwheeling “L’America” predates the “L.A. Woman” sessions by more than a year. The track had been intended for inclusion in Antonioni’s 1970 psychedelic drama, Zabriskie Point. The Italian auteur had notably tapped the Yardbirds for 1966’s Blow-Up, and it appeared he might do the same this time around with the Doors. He visited the band in the recording studio, but their intensity not to mention volume proved too much for him to handle at close range. “We played it for him, and it was so loud, it pinned him up against the wall,” Manzarek told L.A. Weekly in 2011. “When it was over, he thanked us and fled.” Predictably, the song was not included in the film. The Doors were in good company – Jerry Garcia, John Fahey and Pink Floyd also had work rejected from the soundtrack.

The lyrics for “L.A. Woman‘s” lead single the Doors’ first to crack the Top 40 since “Touch Me” two years earlier – were born out of a particularly noisy fight between Robbie Krieger and his future wife, Lynne. “Every time we had an argument, she used to get pissed off and go out the door and slam the door so loud the house would shake,” he said in “Mr. Mojo Risin“. But the title borrows a signature phrase from Duke Ellington, who would end every concert with the sign-off, “We love you madly.” Krieger’s bandmates, 

Aside from “L’America,” which was already in the can, the basic tracks for “L.A. Woman” came together in just six days spread between December 1970 and January 1971. Mixing took an additional week, but that’s still a blink of an eye compared to the nine months it took to complete the Doors’ cumbersome 1969 work, “The Soft Parade“. The rapid pace ensured that the mercurial Jim Morrison, whose short attention span often led him towards destructive tendencies, remained focused and on his best behaviour. During a single session, which the singer dubbed “blues day,” they enthusiastically tackled “Cars Hiss By My Window,” “Been Down So Long,” “Crawling King Snake” and several other loose jams.

When the band gathered at Poppi Studios early January 1971 to mix “L.A. Woman” with Bruce Botnick, they made some last minute embroideries to their epic album closer. Thunderstorm sound effects were added to “Riders on the Storm,” but Morrison had a more subtle contribution: two ghostly whispers of the song’s title on the fadeout. The eerie send-off is even more haunting in retrospect. “That’s the last thing he ever did,” Ray Manzarek told Uncut. “An ephemeral, whispered overdub.” The song was released as the album’s second single, entering the Billboard charts on July 3rd, 1971 – the day Jim Morrison died.

Cool Ghouls – a band fledged in San Francisco on house shows, minimum wage jobs, BBQ’s in Golden Gate Park and the romance of a city’s psychedelic history turns 10 this year. What better a decennial celebration than the release of their fourth album, “At George’s Zoo!” How did the San Francisco’s fab four arrive at George’s Zoo? The teenage friendship of complimentary spirits Pat McDonald (Guitar/Vox) and Pat Thomas (Bass/Vox) serves as square one.

The Patricks were munching on Eggo-waffle-sandwiches and downing warm Taaka in suburban Benicia years before McDonald would hear George Clinton address his fans as “Cool Ghouls”. The boys played their debut gig as Cool Ghouls at San Francisco’s legendary The Stud in 2011, but there’s no doubt the musical moment cementing the band’s trajectory was much earlier at the 18th birthday party for boy-wonder Ryan Wong (Guitar/Vox) – at the Wong household. You might remember the Ghouls’ earliest days… McDonald’s hair hung luxuriously past his waist, Thomas dreamt of no longer having to crash on friends’ couches to call SF home and Wong looked forward to turning 21. Cool Ghouls’ Pete Best, Cody Voorhees, thrashed wildly – but briefly – on the drums and Alex Fleshman (Drums), who still claims he’s not really “a drummer”, turned out to be a really good drummer. Thomas would sleep pee on tour. Those were golden days!.

It’s been 2 years since the last time Cool Ghouls have even played. Fortunately for us, the ghouls got an album in before it all went to shit, and they made it count. “At George’s Zoo” includes 15 of the 27 tunes they managed to eke out while simultaneously working through major life moves. It was a 5-month, all out, final sprint down the homestretch (to Ryan’s moving day) with affable engineer Robby Joseph, at his makeshift garage studio in the Outer Sunset . Instead of recording the entire album over a few consecutive days – like they’d done with Tim Cohen, Sonny Smith and Kelley Stoltz for the first three LPs – the band took it slow by working through a few songs each weekend after rehearsing them the week before. These guys have a real commitment to elevating as songwriters, musicians and ensemble players. It’s always been for the music with Cool Ghouls and this long-awaited self-produced outing is a track by track display of the ground they’ve covered and heights they can achieve. Their vocals and trademark harmonies are front and centre and out-of-control-good.

Ryan’s guitar solos are incredible. The horns by Danny Brown (sax) and Andrew Stephens (trumpet) hit in all the right places. Henry Baker (Pat Thomas Band / Tino Drima), plays keys throughout. There’s even a mesmerizing string section (“Land Song”) by sonic polyglot, Dylan Edrich. None of this growth is to the detriment of the fun, natural, feeling that fans have come to expect from the band. This is a fully realized Cool Ghouls album.

It paints a remarkable portrait of SF’s homegrown heroes and the many corners they’ve explored over the last decade. The song writing, harmony and playing are nothing if not solid. The lyrics are keen. Robby’s recording and mixing sound great start to finish . It’s a triumphant addition to their catalogue.

Recommended for Stooges and Beach Boys fans alike. Listen and see! Yes, many things have changed since 2011. Who knows what the 20’s will have in store for life on Earth, let alone the Cool Ghouls? We at least know that 2021 has “At George’s Zoo”

Available now on LP / CD / Digital via Empty Cellar Records and Melodic Records worldwide.

Sam Durkes, Trevor Brooks and Taylor Vick first set out to collaborate with the intended goal of pitching their music for film and television projects. Durkes, a member of Ezra Furman’s band, had just completed work on Furman’s soundtrack for the Netflix series Sex Education and knew Brooks through his own work with Furman. The pair were already familiar with Vick, who had established herself as a prolific cult solo artist with Boy Scouts, and asked if she would be interested in assisting for their gestational soundtrack project. The idea of Art Moore, as a band, or Art Moore was still a ways away.

Art Moore they are made up of our drummer Sam Durkes, our live sound engineer Trevor Brooks and the brilliant songwriter Taylor Vick of the band Boy Scouts

released April 20th, 2022 through Anti-Records

As lockdown approached in 2020, Chicago-based singer Lili Trifilio was wrapping up a tour in support of Beach Bunny’s debut album, “Honeymoon“. Suddenly, she found herself back at her parents’ house, coping with her new reality. To deal, she retreated into sci-fi stories and her always-active imagination. She envisioned new places to travel in her mind, thus dreaming up big, bombastic pop sounds to construct Beach Bunny’s highly anticipated sophomore album, “Emotional Creature“. Simultaneously about personal growth, “Emotional Creature” is a collection of highly relatable songs that capture the highs and lows of new relationships, the joys and vulnerabilities of letting someone in, the gut-wrenching realities of experiencing anxiety, leaving toxic relationships, and seeing yourself through the eyes of the one you love. These complex feelings are expertly contrasted with ultra-poppy melodies, anthemic choruses, and a slight punk edge.

“The songs have grown with me over time,” Trifilio explains. “Some of them were written in various stages of life, and I think as we go through different experiences and hardships, you come out stronger. I’ve grown as a person, so the song writing reflects that.”

With its openhearted, vulnerable themes and progressive, hook-filled take on pop rock and pop punk, “Emotional Creature” only further cements Beach Bunny and Trifilio’s well-earned reputation as a leading voice of their generation.

Beach Bunny announce their highly anticipated sophomore album “Emotional Creature” out July 22nd on Mom+Pop Music.

On “Their Invisible Hands” Clara Engel draws for the songs, the vocals and the instruments and also for recording and producing the album at home. The songs on Clara Engel’s new album were partly improvised and as we are used to by now, a very special set of instruments is also used this time.

In addition to Clara Engel’s now well-known sigaardoos guitar, special instruments such as the talharpa, the shruti box, the tank drum, the melodica and the chromonica can be heard on “Their Invisible Hands“, after which the musician from Toronto used various objects as percussion instruments. It delivers an album that is as beautiful as it is special, which will sound familiar to anyone who knows the music of Clara Engel, although the musician from Toronto always breaks new ground.

On “Their Invisible Hands“, a fairly subtle instrumentation has been chosen, which is combined here and there with multiple layers of vocals, but these vocals are also omitted in a number of songs. As so often, Clara Engel’s music, thanks to the special soundscapes, has an enchanting or even hypnotic character and just like the previous albums you also have to hear “Their Invisible Hands” a few times before everything falls into place.

On “Their Invisible Hands” Clara Engel keeps the tempo low and several layers of music are stacked on top of each other. It gives the music a particularly spacious and also visual character. The instrumentation consists partly of repetitive elements, often guitar lines, after which the somewhat exotic instruments fill the open space.

Because of the special instruments, “Their Invisible Hands” also sounds completely different from all other albums that have recently been released. Clara Engel makes music that fits into the folk box with some imagination, but because of the special sounds it is not a moment folk that you know from other musicians, although Clara Engel does have a voice that can work well in more traditional folk.

It is amazing how Clara Engel also manages to combine many exotic and also different instruments in songs that ultimately sound fairly conventional. Because the Canadian musician made the new album alone, “Their Invisible Hands” sounds a bit more subdued than some of the predecessors, but this time it is also a colourful and special sound carpet that comes out of the speakers.

Clara Engel had no complaints about inspiration this time, because “Their Invisible Hands” contains thirteen songs and has a playing time of more than seventy minutes. The album contains mainly long tracks (the majority of the tracks last at least five minutes), which further enhances the mesmerizing nature of the Toronto musician’s music. “Their Invisible Hands” is an album on which you keep discovering new things and is another valuable addition to a completely unique oeuvre.

Released April 15th, 2022

Recorded and mixed at home in 2021 by Clara Engel.

All songs and instrumentals written and improvised by Clara Engel
Words to O’ Human Child are taken from W.B. Yeats’ “The Stolen Child”
Instruments: voice, cigar box guitar, talharpa, shruti box, melodica, found percussion, tongue drum, chromonica.

Bands inspired by Californian psychedelics from the late 60s are plentiful, bands that make music of the beauty of Papercuts’ Past Life Regression are extremely rarePast
Life Regression, the seventh album by the American band Papercuts, only needs a few notes to drag you back decades in time. Let the album of the band from San Francisco come out of the speakers, close your eyes, and you imagine yourself in the California of the ‘summer of love’. The great thing about Papercuts’ music is that on the one hand it sounds wonderfully authentic and nostalgic, but on the other hand the band around Jason Quever subtly incorporates influences from a much later date. Past Life Regression is an album to dream away from, but in the meantime you don’t want to miss a note of all the musical splendor on this album. World record.

The American band Papercuts exists twenty years this year and releases its seventh album this month. None of the previous six seem even remotely familiar to me, but I am very charmed by the Past Life Regression, which was published this month, which caught me off guard immediately on the first listen.

Papercuts are from San Francisco and in the opening track of her new album takes you to the California of the late 60s and early 70s with intoxicating analogue synths, irresistibly sunny guitar runs and extraordinarily dreamy vocals. The opening track of “Past Life Regression” could be 50 years or 60 years old, until the guitars at the end might be a bit too much derailed. “Past Life Regression” by Papercuts often derails this, but the music of Papercuts remains music from times gone by, with a contemporary touch here and there.

Papercuts is a project by American musician Jason Quever, who also holds all the strings on the band’s seventh album and draws outside of the drums and women’s vocals for everything the album has to offer. And “Past Life Regression” has a lot to offer.

In the songs in which the authentic sounding synths and organs dominate and the layers of The Mamas & The Papas like men’s and women’s vocals sound especially dreamy, I hear some echoes of a band like The Zombies, when the cello is used the Fab Four immediately appear, but when the guitars dominate and sound wonderfully elementary, you can hear that Jason Quever is especially indebted to the oeuvre of The Velvet Underground.

I mentioned the music of Papercuts above music from a bygone era with a contemporary touch and that is not as simple as it seems. There are a number of light years between The Velvet Underground and The Jesus & Mary Chain and between The Zombies and Echo & The Bunnymen, but Papercuts bridges these distances in a few chords.

In general, however, it is good to stay in the musical landscape of the San Francisco of the late 60s, in which Papercuts can work in a wide field. “Past Life Regression” occasionally sounds like a collector full of obscure psychedelics from this decade, although Papercuts is almost immediately a band that in that case should immediately exchange obscurity for eternal fame.

However, Papercuts is a band of today and will have to compete with a lot of other bands that get the mustard in the California of the late 60s. It’s stiff competition, but Papercuts can handle it. “Past Life Regression” is an album that can only make you very happy and it is also an album that is a lot more interesting and versatile musically and vocally than all bands that can be caught with the broad label neo-psychedelics.

It is a label that also fits Jason Quever’s band, although Papercuts is much more than neo-psychedelics as far as I’m concerned, if only because the American musician also subtly incorporates influences from slowcore, lo-fi, jangle pop and shoegaze into his music and signs for a production for which Phil Spector would not have been ashamed. As I said, I was immediately over on first listen, but now I cherish this album as one of the highlights of the still fairly young music year 2022.

released April 1st, 2022

All songs written and recorded by Jason Quever.
3, 4, 5, 9 lyrics written by Jason Quever and Donovan Quinn.
Amy Marco – backing vocals on 1, 4, 6, 7.
Will Halsey – drums on 3, 4.