THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Anton Newcombe – frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature – returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s 20th full-length studio album The Future Is Your Past.
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 U.S. to anoint the next US guitar band as the flavour of the month and major labels were on the hunt for the compliant hopefuls to be their latest quick fix. At the time, 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.
He had observed in silent horror as his peers meekly acquiesced to everything — yes to contracts, yes to management, yes to suggestions, yes to this, yes to that, yes, yes, yes. But he was different. 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.” Much of this was documented in the controversial movie Dig!, which is still hailed as one of the best rock documentaries ever made, and celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022.
Brian Jonestown Massacre’s shoegazing-tinged debut album Methodrone was released in 1995, and since then numerous bandmembers 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 have been a further 19 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre moniker 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.”
It’s with that spirit that 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.
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 and The Real (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees) 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.” By the end of it they had two albums ready to go. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums).
There is no such thing as a defining statement in 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 U.K. 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 Newcombe and Brian Jonestown Massacre tick these days. He’ll keep jumping in that fire. That’s how he rolls. Savour it.
“My son Wolfgang is very different to me, thank God, but we have so many things in common; dancing, making up songs, and vocalising strange combinations of words and ideas that make us laugh, or make sense to us in some meaningful way,” Newcombe says. “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 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.”
