Review: Brian Jonestown Massacre at Magnet House

Brian Jonestown Massacre at Magnet House
w/ Michael Savage Band
Tuesday, March 31, 2026

“Live music is a wonderful thing. It has nothing to do with the individual players; it’s to do with us all sharing the same time and space together, experiencing the magic communally.” – Anton Newcombe, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Magnet House, Perth, March 31st, 2026

The feel of a new season looming brought a cool change to the evening along Murray Street; however, inside Magnet House, the room was already sweating, like a sinner who had walked into a confessional, ready to absorb a wall of sound delivered in the form of harmonic psychedelia. A city street that was for a brief moment erased and redrawn in fuzz. It was the last show of the Brian Jonestown Massacre Australian tour, sold out, packed from the front of the stage to the back of the room, the sides already swollen around the pillars that aligned the bar.

The carpets were sticky, the air was thick and smelt like beer, it was hard to move, and there was a low-frequency hum that surrounded the walls. The capacity crowd was a fusion of shaggy manes, Beatle mops, retro paisley, denim fossils and vintage leather jackets that have seen things. A congregation of the soon-to-be-converted, along with the die-hard lifers who understood you don’t go to a BJM show for reliability; you go for the chance of witnessing something either transcendent or catastrophically human.

History isn’t just baggage with this band; it’s part of the setlist. After three decades and countless albums and live shows, the BJM continue to prove themselves to be a force. Not merely a concert, but more of a chemical reaction. A long-form hallucination administered by frontman Anton Newcombe, who walks the line somewhere between mad scientist and a man trying to tune reality itself.

At stage time, the BJM seemed to not just arrive on stage; instead, they condensed out of nowhere, like a band forming in real time out of a smoky red haze of fog and feedback. The seven members all slowly took their positions with guitars everywhere—too many guitars, which, for this band, was exactly the right number. Newcombe stood offstage left, sporting his trademark wide-brimmed hat and radiating that beautiful, unnerving “I am hearing something you are not” energy as the slow ambient drone of sound began—not yet a song, but rather a presence. A slow-motion oil slick of guitars leaked into each other as the opening of Whoever You Are began to take its shape, or at least something wearing its skin. From there, Lantern flickered into existence, all haze and shimmer, before it dissolved into the grinding churn of Vacuum Boots.

Between songs there was constant movement on stage, not much banter to begin with—just business. Roadies moved around and swapped rigs as Anton took all the time he deemed fit to tune and tune and retune for every movement he searched for. It’s tonal chemistry, as pedals and effects were dialled from single notes to full chords into a seeping narcotic ooze that seeped into the third eye of everyone in the room. No easy hooks. Just repetition as an initiation ritual.

By then the gathered crowd wasn’t merely just watching; they were absorbing. True psyche shoegaze, sweet, loose, hypnotic and dreamlike, as BJM delivered Stairway to the Best Party in the Universe and melted into Fudge, which spread itself over the room in a dream state amassed by a multitude of twelve-string guitars. Followed by #1 Lucky Kitty, which washed over the audience and left a sensation like garage rock being dragged through a dream before being hung out to dry the morning after. And somewhere in this mass was, centre stage, Joel Gion, who rhythmically shook that tambourine like it was the last honest instrument in rock ‘n’ roll. Not just keeping time but holding it all together.

The more the show drifted on, the more Anton kept his chill, requesting drinks from the side stage and the bar and quipping philosophically between tune-ups; although, given past appearances and notorious historic outbursts, tonight he was on his best behaviour. Tonight, the music kept him centred, seemingly activated by tone and more engrossed in painting the sonic canvas that he was busy crafting on stage. It brought his creations to life as the true mystic shaman he has cultivated himself to be as he simmered through the remainder of the set, untowardly channelling the Brian Jones element of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, like a man trying to recalibrate the universe.

It’s that chemistry on stage that gave the BJM the ability to make their songs seem alive. Blurring notes and wobbling tempos stretched each song past the point of good manners into something hypnotic and almost confrontational. That Girl Suicide hit the room with guitars circling; rhythm dragged the audience under with it. Then When Jokers Attack snarled through the tension, hitting everyone right in the face as if it were a test to get everyone out of their trance before they pivoted to Pish.

It was clear that the audience were along on the journey. They experienced a shared hallucination, only with rhythm and a backbeat; a cosmic trip, swaying and locked into every frequency the band was dialling up, before, out of nowhere, the opening riff to Anemone took shape, like a distant memory they didn’t realise they were holding, and they finally closed out the set with Super-Sonic.

Drawing back to Anton’s opening quote from the show, tonight was about no controversy, no notoriety. Their Magnet House show was a communal manifestation that showcased the true magic of music. A performance more interested in the collaborative texture of the sound rather than the structure of the actual songs, and herein lies the beauty. Too loose for perfection, too obsessive for complete chaos, but always alive and existing on the brink. In an era where live music is increasingly polished to death, BJM still feels dangerous. Not in a performative, punk-rock cliché sense, but in a genuine ‘we can take this anywhere’ kind of way. And for nearly two hours, to a sweaty, sold-out crowd in Perth, they did.

ZAC NICHOLS

Photos by Linda Dunjey