The Brian Jonestown Massacre's New Album Will Be Released On February 10.
The Future Is Your Past, The Band's 20th Album Is Soon To Be Released, the first leg of BJM World Tour 2023 Is Happening Now
I will freely admit that I missed out on the true magic of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and its musical savant/svengali Anton Newcombe until I interviewed him last year for Grammy.com. However, I would just like to announce that The Brian Jonestown’s newest and 20th album, The Future Is Your Past, will be released on February 10. This new album is another excellent slab of psychedelic rock that will blow your mind especially if you get to see the band perform the songs live. The lead single from the album is the track Fudge, which is an otherworldly floating sensory bath of guitar and organ.
Of course, as part of BJM’s and Newcombe’s (same thing) humorous, ironic style, the song that would be the title track for The Future Is Your Past isn’t actually on the album but is the B-side of the Fudge 12-inch purple vinyl single. You can pre-order the new album, which has three alternative covers on vinyl and purchase the latest single and their previous albums at the A Records online shop. Two of the covers are the prize winners of a coloring contest that Newcombe held for fans on Twitter and Instagram, the third is a “color it yourself” cover that comes with a pack of colored pencils for you to do just that. A Records is Anton Newcombe’s record label. Yes, he owns it and his masters.
The band is currently on tour in the UK and Europe as part of their 2023 world tour. Another very interesting part of any BJM tour is the lottery that Newcombe runs on his Twitter account. Most of the shows on this leg of the tour are completely sold out and on four of the dates, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, and London, the British band The Soundcarriers will play before BJM’s set as a special event. Other dates will have support from musician Daisy Rickman and magician The Magic Mod. All you have to do to potentially win a pair of tickets to that evening’s sold-out show is make a donation, of any size, to Oxfam Great Britain and post proof in the thread of the day on Anton Newcombe’s Twitter feed. Please use your real name and make sure you can attend that night’s show because they will leave your name at the door and people do actually win and attend the shows.
Here’s the tweet announcing one of the winners:
The remaining dates on this leg of the tour are:
FRI 03/02/23 U.K Birmingham – Academy 2
SAT 04/02/23 U.K Manchester – Ritz
SUN 05/02/23 U.K Glasgow – Barrowlands
MON 06/02/23 U.K Edinburgh – La Belle Angele
TUE 07/02/23 U.K Newcastle – Riverside
THU 09/02/23 IRELAND Dublin – Academy
FRI 10/02/23 U.K Belfast – Limelight 2
SAT 11/02/23 U.K Liverpool – Camp & Furnace
SUN 12/02/23 U.K Nottingham – Rock City
TUE 14/02/23 U.K Leeds – Stylus
WED 15/02/23 U.K London – Forum
FRI 17/02/23 THE NETHERLANDS Groningen – Oosterpoort KZ
SAT 18/02/23 GERMANY Hamburg – Knust
SUN 19/02/23 DENMARK Copenhagen – Amager Bio
MON 20/02/23 SWEDEN Gothenburg – Pustervik
TUE 21/02/23 SWEDEN Stockholm -Slaktkyrkan
WED 22/02/23 NORWAY Oslo – Rockefeller
THU 23/02/23 SWEDEN Malmo – Moriska Paviljonen
SAT 25/02/23 GERMANY Berlin – Huxleys
MON 27/02/23 SWITZERLAND Zurich- Mascotte
TUE 02/28/23 SWITZERLAND Geneva- PTR/L’Usine
FRI 03/03/23 ICELAND Reykjavík- Gamla Bíó
The album is excellent and the band is mostly playing the new songs from the new release and the previous work, Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees, on tour. Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees is definitely one of the albums I will put on my list of best albums of 2022 when I get around to writing it. Newcombe’s haunting and beautiful style, along with his and the band’s songcraft and musicianship are stellar; Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar), Hallberg Daði Hallbergsson (bass), and Uri Rennert (drums) played on the session recordings, and BJM’s full touring band has Uri Rennert, Collin Hegna, Ricky Maymi, Ryan Van Kriedt, and tambourine man Joel Gion as members.
I highly recommend both albums and seeing the band live if you can. Abandon Ship, a song that Newcombe originally wrote for Iggy Pop, which has a cool Stooges vibe, is a rocking set closer.
Newcombe, in a quote from the press release says about the album, “My son Wolfgang is very different to me, thank god, but we have so many things in common; dancing, making up songs, and vocalizing strange combinations of words and ideas that make us laugh, or make sense to us in some meaningful way. At a certain point, I started writing down these words and random ideas to use as titles. Quite a few of the songs from this album, and from Fire Doesn't Grow On Trees are in fact his ideas., including Your Mind Is My Cafe, and The Future Is Your Past. Both of these albums and many more songs were written in Berlin at my studio during the pandemic. A song a day, written, recorded, and shared on YouTube as a work in progress. 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.”