Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind - CollectiV

The Quietus

Jim Jones is a true believer in the righteous power of rock & roll, a form he knows from the inside out. Coming straight from a year of life-affirming reunion shows with his 90s band Thee Hypnotics, Jones's second album with current outfit The Righteous Mind is driving, high-energy, distorted guitar music designed to shake 2019 out of its apathetic gloom and get it up and dancing, alive and ready to take on the world.

That said, The Righteous Mind's original musical brief was 'heavy lounge', and equal space is given to slower numbers that maintain the intensity even as they step off the accelerator, giving Jones a chance to extend his range. He shifts easily from a mumbling baritone to a thin falsetto on 'Meth Church', which retains a blackened rock & roll heart even as it flirts with trip-hop atmospherics. On 'Dark Secrets' he lands somewhere between Lee Hazlewood, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, in a richly gothic landscape that's pure Joe Meek.

But while it's dark, dangerous and unafraid to stare into the abyss, Collectiv is primarily about having fun. Any album that opens with a track called 'Sex Robot' hopefully doesn't take itself too seriously, and although the second track is officially called 'Satan's Got His Heart Set on You,' Jones is clearly singing "Satan's got a hard-on for you" over the kind of gloriously old school, down and dirty, wild-eyed and flailing R&B that Big Joe Turner would've made if they'd had some decent fuzz pedals back in the day.

Collectiv is hardly ground-breaking, but that isn't the point: the album's aesthetic is less about originality and more about community. As the title suggests, it's about bringing people together using the power of a musical style proven to be singularly effective in doing just that. But The Righteous Mind never deal in pastiche or self-conscious parody; indeed, what comes over more than anything is a sincere love and deep understanding of the form at hand. Where others see clichés, Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind see archetypes, and they know exactly how to handle them, imbuing their blues-punk blasts with just the right sense of theatre, history and mythology.

For instance, does it matter that Jones plays Keith Richards' 1964 Gibson Hummingbird throughout the album? Damn right it does, even if sonically it would sound exactly the same whatever guitar of a similar model he was using. In rock & roll, 55 years is long enough to turn a simple instrument into a holy relic, and if there are only so many ways you can rearrange the same three chords then it’s the mythic power you can bring to bear on them that makes all the difference.

Though it isn't overt, the Stones influence is audible where it matters: the way Mal Troon's overdriven guitar is cut up by Matt Millership's urgent piano flourishes, the tight-but-loose swing of rhythm section Gavin Jay (bass) and Andy Marvell (drums), and the rude interjections of Stuart Dace's tenor saxophone. But this band pulls from all corners of rock n' roll's chequered history, building on a trashy garage chassis with elements of swamp rock, gospel, blues, country, psychedelic pop and gothic post-punk all contributing to the Collectiv stew.

As Jones sings towards the end of the record, "We both know where we're going to go, but we're going there anyway". Jim Jones And The Righteous Mind play rock & roll, and rock & roll plays them. It's a twisted, complicated relationship, but it seems to be working out just fine.

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Drowned In Sound 80

While Jones' two previous outfits (Black Moses & The Jim Jones Revue) after Thee Hypnotics continued his quest for creating dissonant rock and roll at its most primitive, his most recent guise fronting The Righteous Mind delivers on every level. Formed five years ago from the ashes of The Jim Jones Revue, 2017's debut Super Natural announced their arrival in all its bombastic glory. Following on from the Revue's final release, 2012's The Savage Heart, it suggested Jones and his current band of players had broadened their horizons somewhat.

So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that CollectiV - named as such in tribute to the five people behind its creation - represents arguably the most authentically primal and down to earth rock and roll record you're likely to hear all year. As well as Jones and The Righteous Mind, there's an impressive guest list of cameos including occasional Primal Scream guitarist Little Barrie Cadogan, London based soul singer Sister Cookie and Slovenian opera vocalist Vesna Petrasin whilst reuniting with fellow Thee Hypnotics guitarist Ray Hanson and drummer Phil Smith on 'Attack Of The Killer Brainz'.

Throw Keith Richards' 1964 Gibson Hummingbird into the mix - his guitar was acquired by Jones via The Dirty Strangers' Alan Clayton prior to recording CollectiV - and you've an instant recipe for success. With such a wide range of influences and ideas brought to the table, CollectiV, acts as a voyage of discovery rather than another rock and roll history lesson.

Opener and recent single 'Sex Robot' sounds like the aftermath of a mid-afternoon bonding session between T Rex and the MC5, which acts as a perfect launchpad for the nine pieces that follow. Jones in fine voice throughout, his vocal range veering from demonic primal scream to delirious circus ringmaster between verses. It sets the scene succinctly for 'Satan's Got His Heart Set On You', a big, gospel music influenced boogie impeccably orchestrated Matt Millership's skilled piano tinkling backed by an aurora of voices in the foreground offering their two pennies worth on every chorus.

Better still is 'O Genie', perhaps the closest Jones comes to his earliest compositions with Thee Hypnotics. Sonically ambivalent yet delightfully discordant, it serves as a timely reminder of its creators' willingness to appropriate the best bits of the past while sounding as if they've landed unwittingly from another world. The fast paced 'Attack of the Killer Brainz' could be 'Jumping Jack Flash' reimagined by Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, which isn't actually as ridiculous as it sounds, while the sinister 'Dark Secrets' doffs its cap towards John Leyton's 'Johnny Remember Me' before tossing a post-Brexit riposte ("Small towns with small minds) into the mix for good measure.

'Meth Church' could be the finest soundtrack to a spaghetti western known to man, while 'Out Align' is like Spiritualized wrestling with the MC5 (them again) for aural supremacy. Where of course, Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind come out on top. While their cover of Wilson Pickett's 'I Found A Love' serves its purpose as a testimonial to one of the greatest soul singers to have graced this mortal coil, the closing gambit that's 'Going There Anyway' and 'Shazam' further accentuates this record's eclectic nature. The former by way of its laid back, countrified charm whereas the latter's grand piano led finale sees Jones proclaim "I know the ropes like the back of my hand."

On this showing, who are we to argue. Put simply, CollectiV is a masterclass in supremely executed rock and roll.