There’s something wildly calming about watching seven men create controlled chaos on a stage, with no one bothering to explain why. The Brian Jonestown Massacre don’t play concerts — they stage séances. And on this May evening at Amager Bio, many of us had said yes to being possessed by noise, crookedness and tambourine devotion.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Anton Newcombe looked like a man who had gotten up straight out of a dream and brought the whole band with him. After 35 years, BJM is still the closest we get to a spiritual rock cult, where repetition is the ritual and the guitar pedals are the priests.
The stage was packed tight: three 12-string guitars, a sea of pedalboards, a rhythm section keeping the whole thing from imploding — and, of course, Joel Gion, who doesn’t play the tambourine as a rhythm instrument, but as a ceremony. He is half mascot, half chanting shaman. And the audience loves it.
The sound was ferocious and hypnotic. The walls of Amager Bio felt as if they might give way at any moment, and yet everything had an almost unnerving precision to it. Not tight, but deliberate. Like a dream in which you know you’re dreaming — and stay in it anyway.
When “Anemone” arrived, it was like being served a glass of red wine in a room full of absinthe. The dragging, floating melody made the room feel weightless, and Anton sang with a strange kind of resignation, as if it were the first and last time he would ever sing it. It wasn’t. But it felt that way.
Between songs? Not much talk. No Anton Newcombe outbursts, which you might otherwise almost expect (and perhaps secretly hope for). Just focused joy in playing and a surprisingly collective calm. Even when everything tipped over into jam territory — and it did — it still had direction. A kind of purposeful wildness.
This is not music for people who ask, “When are they playing the hit?” or “Shouldn’t we go get a beer?” This is music for people who go to concerts with their whole body. For people who know that noise is not noise, but texture.
Reflection:
BJM still couldn’t care less about what is neat, popular or perfect. They play the way they want — and we listen because we can’t help ourselves. In a time when so much music is made for TikTok, it feels liberating to be in the company of a band that still believes in the length of the album, the repetition of the song and the power of the tambourine.
Amager Bio was exactly the right room for their sound and their energy. And although the concert probably won’t convert any new fans, it gave those of us already under its spell exactly what we came for: a psychedelic high, without filter and without apology.
