Brian Jonestown Massacre at Variety Playhouse
Monday, April 13th, 2009
Brian Jonestown Massacre played a compellingly mellow show on Friday night at Variety Playhouse. The tambourine guy is still in the band and he is still very hard to look at, yet his placement at the front and center of the stage feels like a distractionary tactic.
As the band stood bathed in washes of intense blue and green lights it was difficult to tell which one of the five guitarists on stage was the group’s semi-mythic frontman Anton Newcombe. Silhoueted against the lights, a couple of the players could have easily passed for him. Again, this didn’t seem to be an accident.
One can imagine that being a group’s mastermind who has been so often maligned/hyped for having various meltdowns and temper tantrums both on and off stage over the years, would probably make one want to hide in the shadows.
At the show there was much talk in the audience about some sort of liver condition that has forced Newcombe to stop drinking. Whatever the case may be, the show was fantastic, hypnotic and without incident. There really wasn’t even much verbal interaction between the audience and the performers. Drama was non-existent as the group wafted through a career spanning set, and that’s a good thing. BJM often suffers from the same reputational set backs that someone like Cat Power used to suffer as well. The selling point for many people is that they want to see the meltdown go down on stage, made famous by the film Dig!, and that’s a damn shame. BJM has mastered their own, very gorgeous musical voice amidst a wash of paisley rock and shoe gazer jams. For this show, the music was the star, with highlights including massive runs through “Whoever You Are, “B.S.A.” and a back-to-back performance of “Not Even if You Were the Last Dandy on Earth” and “A New Low in Getting High.”
BJM is bigger and better and calmer than the band they were a decade ago, or at least they were Friday night.
(Photos by Perry Julien)
