Lucky for Tuesday nightap crowd at the , Anton Newcombe and the came to Denver to play. Not to whine, rant, tell stories, argue or complain — they came to play. And play they did, for well over two hours, in a set that was largely joyful and expansive.
The success of a Brian Jonestown Massacre show seems to be firmly tied to the mood of a few key members of the band — now touring as an eight piece (four guitarists, with an occasional addition of a fifth, when organist/keyboardist Rob Campanella picks up the axe). BJM fans who’ve seen the outfit in Denver before (Monolith 2008, for example), or who’ve checked out “Dig!,” the 2004 indie-doc featuring a melodramatic retelling of the band’s trials and travails, know that itap just as likely to see the band disintegrate into petty arguments and moodiness as it is to see a focused, professional musical collective.
But everyone, it seems, was in a great mood at Tuesday’s show. Lead singer/songwriter/dictator Anton Newcombe, who was downright surly when we saw him a little over a week ago at , was the most affable and engaged I have ever seen him, greeting fans before the show and even sitting in on vocals and tambourine for a song with opening act Blue Angel Lounge, who also put in a strong, driving set of Echo/New Order-ish darkly psychedelic rock.
Opening with “Stairway to the Best Party in the Universe,” BJM kicked off the night with a multi-layered collage of jangly guitars and driving rhythms which carried through to other mainstays like “I Got My Eyes on You.” Newcombe’s sunny mood was evidently shared by guitarist/vocalist Matt Hollywood, and by auxiliary percussionist Joel Gion (amusingly, the most dispassionate tambourine player in the world) with whom he even shared an on-stage smooch. The set featured songs representing a wide swath of the band’s catalogue — nearly 20 years of music. At best, the sound was swelling and expansive (what you’d expect from five guitars).
The band lost momentum occasionally, straying away from pop-infused psychedelia into narcoticized, molasses-slow jams that seemed to strain the attention of the otherwise engaged audience. But the group powered through these moments and eventually landed in “Straight Up and Down” featuring a “Sympathy for the Devil/Hey Jude” coda complete with an audience sing-along. The band left the stage, but Newcombe and one guitarist stayed, filling the smoke-filled Bluebird with a sonic haze of keyboard and guitar distortion, and reminding the sated crowd, finally, that BJM had come to play.
Follow our news and updates on , our whereabouts on and our relationship status on . Or send us a telegram.
Amy McGrath is a Denver-based writer and regular contributor to Reverb.
Michael McGrath is a Denver area photographer. His work is available at . Visit .
