The Brian Jonestown Massacre

The Brian Jonestown Massacre are dinosaurs, managing somehow to be relics of two long gone eras: the mid to late 1960s, which they hearken back to in their songs and band name, and the indie scene from which they emerged in the mid-90s. In the wake of indie music's mainstreaming via Zach "Scrubs isn't Funny" Braff's Garden State, the band's brand of the genre seems out of place. Replete with tape hiss, studio noise and three unprintable song titles, the rough-edged and at times inaccessible My Bloody Underground, the band's ninth LP in almost 18 years, continues in the tradition set by the band's back catalogue while also plotting a radical new trajectory.

To be certain, My Bloody Underground is a difficult album with 13 songs, each clocking over four minutes, with studio noise and silence between them.

But the songs are gold.

Reading not so far into the albums title, we can hear the group mining two genre-defining bands: My Bloody Valentine and the Velvet Underground. The sinister and murky guitars recall Velvets' best known albums, while the electronic squall on "Who Cares Why" and "Golden Frost" suggest the best of Kevin Shields. Throbbing bass, pulsing percussion and vocals hidden low in the mix suggest Can and Neu! in addition to the Massacre's garage-rock forebears. "Darkwave Drive/Big Drill Car" echoes the Spaghetti Western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, while the third and fourth unutterably-titled tracks are a droning Indian folk jam and a four-minute instrumental piano interlude, respectively.

Elsewhere, the band dabbles in electronic experimentation, with (I'm going to guess) Icelandic vocals on the echo-laden "Ljosmyndir" and the droning analog synthesizers of "Black Hole Symphony."

Having long ago staked out their aesthetic, the Massacre is unafraid to harken back to these bands, wearing their influences on their sleeves, album or otherwise, while still managing to maintain their own unique sound-culminating in a sprawling, puzzling, and gloriously shambolic record.