The Black Rebel Motorcycles Club - or as they will be referred to as BRMC hereafter - has always seemed to me like the ultimate "sounds like" band, in that any account of their music begins with the categorical phrase, "they sound like..." And almost to a man, people will follow that up phrase with a comparison to The Jesus and Mary Chain or My Bloody Valentine.
BMRC was hatched in 1995 not from some Manchester flat but from the collective effort of Robert Turner and Peter Hayes, two San Franciscans who adored 90's shoe-gazer rock. They sold records from their trunks, made it onto compilations and pushed hard for the break that makes them a substantive name in hipster households. Their allegiances are more or less clear on the first two releases, 2000's self-titled album and 2003's Take Them On, On Your Own. These albums garnered BMRC a cultish following, the requisite "best band in the world" proclamation from an established artist (Noel Gallagher of Oasis) and ultimately were received with some heady critical acclaim; again though, most people attached themselves to these two records precisely because they sounded like something that was bygone and comforting.
Now comes Howl a bright, shiny new 13-song album from NoCal's answer to what once seemed the fey rock revival, and to its credit, it doesn't sound like anything they've done before. No one would confuse this sound with the aforementioned influences, and the tenacity exhibited on the first two BMRC records is beginning to show itself in a new, strutting, sauntering take on garage. The modern influences on Howl seem to be more from the likes of Jon Spencer or more obscurely The Dub Narcotic Sound System; a more aged parallel would be to "Gallow's Pole" era Led Zeppelin. There are a lot of tense, bluesy songs here like the title track and the "Ain't No Easy Way." The affinity for psycho-space rock - although not entirely replaced - has suddenly been complimented with an unexplainable spate of grassroots R&B.
As a whole, the BMRC catalog is taking on an interesting form. Already they've swung from raw, punk garage gods to something appreciably more mature. Howl is a record that doesn't carry a signature song, or an overwhelming artistic zeitgeist as extra baggage. It simply runs its course, and what an infecting course that is, one of its most affecting tracks "Sympathetic Noose" coming toward the end. It never peters into a sagging flat place like other albums that sound like a decent idea stretched thin.
There is ample reason to believe that BMRC is on a creative arch without predictable end, and that is reason enough to anticipate the next release. |