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Review & Track Premiere: Brant Bjork, Brant Bjork

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[Click play above to stream ‘Cleaning Out the Ashtray’ from Brant Bjork’s Brant Bjork. Digital release is May 9 followed by physical pressings May 29 on Heavy Psych Sounds. Preorders are here.]

Brant Bjork is no stranger to setting his own direction and his own standard. For over 20 years, he has explored songwriting in various forms and in league with various players — some backing, some collaborating, some purely as part of a live dynamic — but all the while, Bjork has developed and continued to pursue an inimitable style drawing from the tonal weight and presence of heavy rock and the laid back sensibility that’s come to be a defining aspect of Californian desert sound in large part because of his own efforts.

The standard on Brant Bjork, his 13th full-length and latest in a continuing and thus-far-fruitful partnership with Heavy Psych Sounds, would seem to be conveyed right in the opener “Jungle in the Sound,” and the message is relatively straightforward. It needs a little funk, a little boogie, something rhythmic and intangible. Bjork has rarely shied away from engaging race in his work — all the way back to 2003’s Keep Your Cool (reissue review here), which opened with “Hey, Monkey Boy,” up through more recent efforts like 2014’s Black Power Flower (review here) — but “Jungle in the Sound” feels directly in conversation with “Chocolatize” from 2018’s Mankind Woman (review here).

Bootsy’s Rubber Band had “Jungle Bass” in 1979, and Parliament had Chocolate City in 1975, so the history of African-American music he’s engaging with is front-and-center, literally at the fore of the album(s). Mankind Woman record was Bjork‘s last proper studio outing and first for Heavy Psych Sounds following 2016’s Tao of the Devil (review here) on Napalm Records — though the archival Jacoozzi (review here) also surfaced in 2019 — and if the self-titled is speaking to or building off of it in some ways, it’s only fair enough ground for Bjork to cover. And certainly the advent of Brant Bjork‘s Brant Bjork, the sheer fact that 21 years on from his debut solo record, one of desert rock’s most crucial figures would decide to put out an album bearing his own name, is neither happenstance nor an inconsiderable move to make. Once again, he sets his own standard.

He also, fortunately for his generations-spanning fanbase, lives up to it.

Brant Bjork runs an unpretentious-as-ever eight tracks and 37 minutes, and reads like a missive/check-in from that particular otherworld that Bjork‘s music seems to inhabit: a place where no one has to ask if you’ve ever been experienced because the assumption is, yeah, you have. Also you might be stoned. In part, what distinguishes this collection particularly from Mankind Woman, on which he collaborated directly with guitarist Bubba DuPree (Void) in songwriting and brought in the likes of recurring guest vocalist Sean Wheeler to contribute, as well as Tao of the Devil and Black Power Flower before it, is that Bjork recorded all of the instruments on this collection himself. It is a true solo outing.

With recording/mixing by Yosef Sanborn in Joshua Tree and mastering by the esteemed John McBain (ex-Monster Magnet), Bjork establishes his standard readily and sets out on his path with “Mary (You’re Such a Lady)” and “Jesus Was a Bluesman,” an obviously purposeful pairing that talks about faith in a way I can’t remember Bjork having done before, taking dogmatic figureheads and making them characters in his universe. Jesus, a traveling mystic, becomes a bluesman going from town to town to preach. Mary arrives with a sleek groove as though she might be played (gloriously, no doubt) by circa-1974 Pam Grier. And of course, that song might also be about weed.

Brant Bjork

If the theme that ties these songs together thus far is an underlying sense of honesty, or trying to make sense of experience, then “Cleaning Out the Ashtray” — the metaphor being the ashtray of one’s life — is all the more appropriate as a follow-up. The longest cut at 6:35, it boasts the standout line, “Baby all the love you’re looking for is right in front of you,” and a signature, warm-toned solo that reminds not only of best times, but of how refreshing that “clean ashtray” can feel. Side A could hardly ask for a better finish than riding out the midsection jam back to the chorus and a subtle build of fuzz behind the steady beat carrying the nod forward, mellow but not at all absent from the moment, a last crash sounding particularly ready for the stage.

“Duke of Dynamite” is a swinger. It would almost have to be, right? But it is, and it brings to mind the balance Bjork strikes throughout Brant Bjork between the intimacy of a solo record — for sure the acoustic closer “Been So Long” speaks to that, as does the absence of a longer instrumental jam, which is something the last few LPs have featured — and his virtuosity in conveying a full-band feel. He’s playing everything here. Marking his own pace on drums, building up bass and guitar, and adding his own vocals, all the while realizing an aesthetic vision of the songs.

It’s not the first time he’s done it, and after over two decades of working solo, never mind his time in KyussFu Manchu, etc., it’s not a surprise he can pull it off, but it remains impressive. Where “Cleaning Out the Ashtray” comforted with its solo, “Duke of Dynamite” provides a short bit scorch, and rides easy into the speedier “Shitkickin’ Now,” which with lines like, “Left the scene but it followed me/Kept it clean but it followed me,” and so on, could easily be read as autobiographical, but still holds its laid back feel, with the drums deep in the mix and the vocals delivered in such a way as to play up the boogie as much as, if not more than, the punkish undercurrent.

That leaves “Stardust and Diamond Eyes” (6:31) as the grand finale ahead of the quiet capper, and rather than blow it out, Bjork keeps it abidingly cool, with a heavy roll drawing toward a languid flow that’s so much his own it might as well bear his name — oh wait — and a subtle but nigh-on-perfect lead-in for “Been So Long.” The shift in approach at the end reminds of 2006’s Tres Dias (review here) in its guy-and-guitar minimalism, and it underscores the root effectiveness of Brant Bjork‘s songwriting, which, though it’s a point that’s been made all across the album before it, finds its punctuation welcome nonetheless.

For Brant Bjork fans, the return to a solo methodology will speak to some of his older work, specifically his now-classic debut, 1999’s Jalamanta (discussed herealso here). But even for those who haven’t followed him on his winding journey through the desert over a period of years and decades, for newer listeners or someone taking it on after hearing perhaps some of Heavy Psych Sounds‘ catalog reissues, Brant Bjork successfully captures what snared those longtime fans in the first place. And most importantly, it does so without pretending the last 20 years didn’t happen. It is honest, it is genuine, and it is singular.

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One Response to “Review & Track Premiere: Brant Bjork, Brant Bjork

  1. Alive Guy says:

    Damn, you can write! What a review! As a long-time fan who has followed Brant through every album, band, or collaboration, I’m compelled to agree wholeheartedly on every point. 13 albums and I love them all – how is that even possible? Brant is a wizard with a Midas touch!

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