Do you put “motherfuckers” in your band name to attract attention or to put a cap on your audience — or, more likely, because such questions could not be farther from your mind? Relatedly, do you drop your debut album on the Fourth of July because it’s such a dead release week and there will be fewer releases competing for people’s attention, or do you choose a holiday exactly because yours is a low-stakes project that does not demand some grandiose rollout? Or, again, are these kinds of questions beside the point of a band like Motherfuckers JMB & Co.?
This is not a band that stinks of strategy. They seem more interested in sending cosmic vibrations into the universe than shockwaves through the industry. Music Excitement Action Beauty presents as a low-stakes side quest from three talented musicians with an experimental streak. Most of the time, in a column that features exactly one album per week, releases like this one are overshadowed by big-ticket LPs from returning heroes or rising stars. But Independence Day is this Friday, and from where I stand, Motherfuckers JMB & Co.’s album is by far the coolest one coming out.
Team JMB hails from the DMV, the metro area at the intersection of Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, DC. Brian Weitz, the Animal Collective member otherwise known as Geologist, is in the band, playing hurdy gurdy. So is drummer Jim Thomson, best known for his tenure in the cartoonishly costumed metal band GWAR under the pseudonyms Hans Sphincter and Hans Orifice. As far as I know, Marc Minsker, who plays bass, guitar, and harmonium in Motherfuckers, does not have a well-known alter ego like that, but he’s cousins with the great punk-rock journalist Evan Minsker (formerly of Pitchfork, now of see/saw) and has logged time with Third Eye Lounge and Eugene Chadbourne. So JMB is Jim, Marc, and Brian, the “& Co.” is a nod to the community of musicians swirling around the band that undoubtedly informed the album’s creation.
The Motherfuckers made Music Excitement Action Beauty in one afternoon at Maryland’s Tonal Park studios, with “lights lowered and incense and candles lit,” as Thomson explains. He adds that he was attracted to working with Weitz and Minsker “because of the promise of repetition, drone, and psychedelia,” qualities supplied abundantly by these seven tracks. On that fateful day, the trio embarked on a fantastic voyage defined by emphatic grooves, lysergic textures, and hypnotic drones that — thanks to the hurdy gurdy and harmonium — set this band apart from your average space-rock jam session.
The results are familiar, but there’s no one template here. After a shapeless introduction with “Rise,” “Breakers Part 1” storms out of the gate with a hard-crashing rock rhythm section, like Water Damage boiled down to a power trio, only to open up later on when “Breakers Part 2” breathlessly races ahead. In between, “Strange Planet” laces its tom-heavy syncopated backbeat with Eastern melodies and screaming, shimmering noise. In the album’s backstretch, “Studio B” takes things further in that abstract direction, deploying delay pedals until the sounds begin to resemble haunted machinery where the ghosts are in conversation. The dissonant snake-charmer blues of “Metro 29” leads us into our grand finale, “Keep The Temp,” which carries Minsker’s descending bassline and Thomson’s straight-ahead backbeat to the horizon line.
You’ve probably been on rides like this one before, but a great rollercoaster is a thrill no matter how many times you hop aboard, and Motherfuckers JMB & Co. know exactly how to build a track to maximize its twists and turns. If you have a taste for psych, krautrock, and vibed-out sonic exploration in general, Music Excitement Action Beauty is like sipping on an artisanal small-batch beer from a locally sourced brewery. The album has nothing to do with strategy, but it was created with care by experts of the craft.
Music Excitement Action Beauty is out 7/4 on Via Parigi. Pre-order it here.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Kesha’s . (PERIOD)
• Dropkick Murphys’ For The People
• Double Virgo’s Shakedown
• Kae Tempest’s Self Titled
• Rival Consoles’ Landscape From Memory
• The Brains’ Crazy Monster
• Merpire’s Milk Pool
• Jesse Welles’ Pilgrim
• Kapo’s Por Si Alguien Nos Escucha
• Richard Hawley’s Coles Corner 20th Anniversary Deluxe
• Hard-Fi’s Stars Of CCTV (20th Anniversary Deluxe)
• Swiz’s Complete Discography Box Set
• The Sisters Of Mercy’s First And Last And Always Box Set
• Nilüfer Yanya’s Dancing Shoes EP
• Powfu & Lofi Girl’s the life of a lofi boy EP
• Cerrone & Christine And The Queens’ Catching Feelings EP
• NOMELON NOLEMON’s Halo – EP EP
• thistle.’s it’s nice to see you, stranger EP
• PYNKIE’s Big Feeling EP
• Katie Gregson-MacLeod’s Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early EP
