The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are very hit and miss. If you've seen the excellent music documentary "DIG!!!" whcih shows how their love/hate relatonship with The Dandy Warhols, You'll be familiar with how they sabotage their own careers at fairly regular intervals. Therir live shows can be transcendental psychedelic rock and rol extravaganzas, or the can fall apart within a few songs with the band splitting up on stage. They're kind of like America's answer to The Fall in a lot of respects. One main driving force ad a revolving cast of other band members who could be sacked or leave the band at any minute. Musically The Brian Jonestown Massacre are a Velvet Underground influenced garage rock mob who one minute come out with sublime psychpop gems such as "When Jokers Attack" and another minute, sound like a sub-Oasis teenage cover band noodling around with cliched pentatonic scales and terrible lyrics. In that sense this particular compilation album is a true representation of the band, rather than cherry picking the good songs for a best of, this is a warts and all, sprawling double CD ranging from the excellent, to the incredibly skippable.

When they're bad, they tend to sound like a parody of every 60's rock cliche you can think of, but when they're good, they're excellent. It's worth sifting through the lesser tracks to get to the good shit. The spot on critique of their friends/rivals The Dandy Warhols on "Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth" is a particular high point, but for me, the best thing they ever did was the live version of "Swallowtail" exclusive to this compilation...