Sometimes you don't need to listen to a record to know what it is like. Here the artist name, title and cover just spell it out so plainly. The only thing you don't learn about this release from Which? Records is just how good it is, and after endless repeated listens I can tell you that this is mighty fine hookah.

You may think that any band who called one album Their Satanic Majesties Second Request are not particularly interested in innovation. However their headfirst dive into the worlds of mid/late sixties Bob Dylan and the Stones sounds fresh and inspired rather than wilfully retro, almost as if it was actually the Stones who were the derivative ones... oh, hang on a minute...

This is a world away from the shallow imitation by the likes of Primal Scream. Bobby Gillespie and co. may have managed to make the Stones seem like even more of a joke than the last 25 years of jaded releases and feeble big-buck tours ever could, but the Brian Jonestown Massacre are here to rightfully reclaim tumble-down, soulful country/ rock and roll from the hands of the inept. This works so well on this extended EP because Anton Newcombe, BJM's songwriter and constant centrepoint, is not aiming to imitate or emulate anyone for the sake of a cheap pose or ready-made image. Instead, inspired by the approach to music-making taken by Brian Jones-era Rolling Stones, this is the real thing, a merging of the contemporary with the retro that ends up sounding utterly timeless. Do not even think about Kula Shaker.

Harmonicas wail, drums clatter and vocals go "Hey hey hey!" like a million snotty, fired up garage bands, the like of which you never hear anymore. However, Newcombe has a very delicate hand when it comes to the arrangements which are spacious and unfold in a beguiling, alluring manner. "Mansion In The Sky" is a splendidly simple folk/blues acoustic twang which contrasts wonderfully with the smoky hammond atmospherics of "Reign On". The simplicity and sublimity of the melody on "All Things Great And Small" is a pearl that countless songwriters would kill to have access to.

While there is undeniably an unhealthy obsession with guns and mass-murderers bubbling away underneath (the final tune, "Arkansas Revisited", was written with Charles Manson), it is incredibly easy to put any bullshit to one side and enjoy the music. As Newcombe is quoted as saying on the cover, "God knows I do the best I can so fuck everything."

View Brian Jonestown Massacre's catalogue at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk