The Thousands

"I’m not for sale. I’m fucking Love, do you understand what I’m saying? Like, the Beatles were for sale. I give it away." – Anton Newcombe, DiG!

Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? is not an Anton Newcombe ego jibe at the Beatles’ classic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and nor is it an ode. What it is, is a collage of world music partially external to Anton Newcombe. A curated exhibition of assorted world styles that comments on how myths hold culture captive (Barthes may have nodded along to Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’ rip-off ‘This Is The One Thing We Did Not Want To Have Happen’) and touches on the irony of the rich denouncing materialism à la "imagine no possessions" John Lennon.**A potential freakin’ disaster in the making turns out to be an accomplished feat by Newcombe playing the dilettante.

The familiar swirling psychedilia indelible to BJM underpins the entire album, the only commonality across the record. It’s a fragmented 13 tracks, but I’m pretty sure Anton doesn’t give too much of a shit about that ‘continuity’ stuff. Part trip-hop, Eastern European gypsy pop (‘Dekta! Dekta! Dekta!’), foreign language, cameos galore (Will Carruthers et al), bhangra beats, and dark atmospheric shoegaze. Less British Stones, more Russian My Bloody Valentine. And it is for sale, in a way.