Brian Jonestown Massacre: Who Killed Sgt Pepper? (Southbound)

This one-time San Francisco outfit which is most often considered a train-wreck of styles helmed by a career-destroying personality (Anton Newcombe) here weighs in with a pretty terrific crash of trash rock'n'roll, grunge-psychedelics, borrowings from world music beats and much more.

In fact, given their musically wayward history (indie-pop drone to electronica) this is a kind of extended summation of "the story so far" with more recent interests thrown into the sonic blender. The title of track three -- the chanted electronica/grime-grunge Let's Go Fucking Mental -- would also seem to summarise their ethic.

And in these days when artists are manufactured (you name 'em, from "indie rock" to r'n'b pop) or old school players such as James Taylor and Carole King (bastards) have minders who seems to think their role is to manipulate the media, the BJM principle is a good and honest one.

Here they have the noise/songs to back it up also: parts of this -- the extended songs such as the six minute First of Your Last Warnings, the seven minute One Thing We Did Not Want -- suggest a more dirty version of Seattle's psychedelic masters Sky Cries Mary and at other times there is pure, primal and menacingly slow-groove rock'n'roll (Super Fucked).

This is true spirit rock which seems to care for not much else outside of itself (another good thing) and makes their concerts in New Zealand (Transmission Room, Auckland, March 8; Bodega, Wellington the following night) essential entries on your gig calendar.