Review Summary: Anton Newcombe writes Methodrone 2 for someone else..
Since getting sober for the third and supposedly final time a few years ago, grouchy multi-instrumentalist and Brian Jonestown Massacre head honcho Anton Newcombe has been going through the typical hyper-productive motions of chronic clarity. After moving to Western Europe and rediscovering electronics, Newcombe has been on a hot streak, writing and producing both for himself and a score of other psychedelic synth acts, and even if that streak is characterized more by steady output than it is by quality material, it’s good to see the man seemingly less troubled and playing nice with others for a change.
It took an unknown Toronto songstress to snap Newcombe out of his Euro-electronic run and back onto his old hallucinogenic trope. Discounting “I Declare Nothing,” Tess Parks has all of one full-length to her name; 2013’s “Blood Hot” walks a similar line to this, a spare hazy collection, hampered only by instrumentation that sounds limited and less skilled than what Newcombe can bring to the table even on his off-days. He goes all out on “I Declare Nothing,” writing a tighter and more lucid set of songs than he has since his first winning lap with BJM in the mid-90’s.
Parks sounds inspired through the album, more ragged and raspy that she was on “Blood Hot.” She never towers over the music, but doesn’t let Newcombe’s dense arrangements overtake her either. First single “Cocaine Cat” sets the tone early for “I Declare Nothing.” Parks listless frigid vocals sit on top of Newcombe’s hazy electric numbers. It’s a tricky balance to strike, sounding thrilling and lazily resigned at once, and the duo pull it off here more often than Newcombe has been able to since the century rolled over.
For all of its morphine sluggishness and robotic progressions, each track has a small touch to kick it up a notch and prevent the album from becoming a monotonous slur. “Melorist” rides a barbed bass that’s ripped straight from Serge Gainsbourg circa 1971, and a caustic organ fills out the chorus as Parks and Newcombe take turns calling “All I see is sunshine.”
“Gone” is a lean gem. Parks sounds less opiated here, getting out of first gear and steering with a bit more dash. A brusque acoustic line forms the spine of the song, and Newcombe riffs himself into a stupor for all of the song’s three minutes.
“German Tangerine” is another primo cut, a fine showing of how psychedelic rock can be much more than a lethargic slow burn. Two guitars lock into a dreamy moil, by turns making the song sound ethereal and ominous.
“Friendlies” is the best song here, a propulsive anodyne shoegaze track. Newcombe’s guitar here is a reminder of just how poignant his music can be when it isn’t treated as an unpolished throwaway. He patiently builds electric crescendos around Parks’ apathetic drawl, each of the three more stirring than the next, while metronomic violins squeal away in the background. The song feels fuller and more convergent than anything he’s done in recent memory, an airtight five-minute stretch of abstracted menace.
Newcombe has always been a dodgy producer. He’s never been particularly afraid of showing off the capacity he has to make even his busiest, most elaborate efforts sound sloppy and spiritless. It’s something that has often held his records back from being cohesively listenable. But on “I Declare Nothing,” he sounds uncharacteristically focused, the songs rarely trailing off into overindulgent ether. A few of the tracks ran a tad longer than their changeless tempo can sustain, but it’s a minor qualm to have with a man who has repeatedly demonstrated than he can squash even his best songwriting in daft fits of mindless overproduction.
Not all of “I Declare Nothing” hits as hard. Opener “Wehmut” (Melancholy), another addition to Newcombe’s German song title fetish, is so sleepy, it never quite manages to come alive; and “Voyage de L'âme” misses the mark similarly, leaning too much onto its drowsiness to get any kind of enthralling heat going. There is a myriad of somewhat stronger B-side cuts that Newcombe has been steadily dumping onto his YouTube channel. Song for song however, this is a sturdier set than anyone could have rightfully expected Newcombe to summon at this point. But I doubt anyone is unhappy that he did. As volatile and fluctuating as his career and personal life have been, his ability has never been in question, and was only ever hindered by self-sabotage.
As reductive as it may sound, what “I Declare Nothing” really is, is a gorgeous answer to anyone who’d ever listened to the sublimely starry “Anemone” off “Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request” and wanted a whole album’s worth of it.
