The first album in an extremely productive year for the BJM (culminating in Thank God for Mental Illness), Take It From the Man (1996) finds the Jonestown boys reorganizing their structure and sound, to great effect. Dropping the shoegazey post-rock posture, they embrace a looser and garage-ier sound a la the Stones and or a hippiefied Sonics. Bursting with energy and filled with all sorts of substances, tracks like “Vacuum Boots” and “Monkey Puzzle” add explosive psych-outs here and there, mixing with ballads and shuffles (“(David Bowie) I’ve Loved You Since I Was Six” and “Dawn”, respectively) and all sorts of other nuggets of weirdo-rock goodness. Produced and created by the band in their own fashion, without any major label interruption or guidance, the record has a very real sensibility to it, as if everything is being played out in front of you. There is never a sense that anything is coordinated or multitracked, but rather an impromptu jam. Maybe that’s why Anton Newcombe can be considered the original Devendra Banhart, and he definitely did it much more authentically and generally better; Take It From the Man only attests to a legacy of his crazed, manic, flawed, but ultimately perfect career (thus far!).
Listen to “Monkey Puzzle” and “Who?” (Live at the Hove Festival, 2008)
Download “Take It From the Man!”
