Black Rebel Motorcycle Club-American X (out now!)

[oscillations.]

Look at this!

Had the UK charts still only counted physical sales, BRMC could have had a Top 15 hit!
14 NE Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Weapon Of Choice

[Adz]

Got the cd, it's pretty great. Not brillant or anything and Weapon is the best song on the album, but it's solid.

[oscillations.]

Really? The general consensus is that its their best yet, or at very least, up there with the debut. Critics posit that they have finally "found their voice".

www.metacritic.com/music/artists/blackrebelmotorcycleclub/baby81
72/100 so far, with Q & Spin and NME's reviews, it should go up higher. It was at 74 yesterday.

"Needs Some Air" is the song in the car ad. Saw it this evening.

Hopefully, MTV can put them on a D&D initiative or something. I think this album can outsell the previous ones with a little bit of nudging.
And given the stagnant charts, Baby 81 should be allowed to make Top 50 or so.

My local record shop is going to promote the hell out of this, as will I.
We hope for the best.

[Adz]

I prefer it to Howl and TTOOYO but is it as good as the debut? I don't know yet.

I still love it, but not as "wow" as Favourite Worst Nightmare.
It sort of feels they're on cruise control, not making any ground.

[oscillations.]

To me, it feels like they actually have really progressed in terms of their songwriting and chorus arrangements. "Berlin", "Weapon of Choice", and "American X" are all more powerful than anything else they've ever released. You could argue it's their most accessible album yet. I'm inclined to think this as well. Catchy from beginning to end.

[oscillations.]

MUSIC OMH
4 stars


Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81 (Island)
UK release date: 30 April 2007


During the last album, time couldn't save their souls. Here and now, they can't wait for time to save themselves. Welcome back BRMC.

Welcome back Nick Jago. There's no doubt, the countrified corner that BRMC found themselves painted into during Howl was pretty much down to his errant behavior, so it's not a surprise to find his restoration marking a return to the sound with which they made friends and influenced people.

It's what we want them to do and ultimately, it's what they're best at. Which isn't to say that the time that Robert Been and Peter Hayes spent getting in touch with their acoustic side has been forgotten. Howl showed that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club could be more than just fuzz and the feedback, and Baby 81 takes that idea and runs with it. Ok, it's (very) slightly at the expense of some of the nihilistic snarl which first endeared them to us, but in exchange we get an album with charms that run deeper.

Charms such as the wide open spaces of American X, patrolled by the same Killer Droid Prog Bots that have been most recently coursing through Muse's nightmares. Yeah, it's three minutes too long, but for six, rages with intergalactic anger. Then there's Lein On Your Dreams, which manages to reinvent Word Up by Cameo for the "whatyarebellinagainst waddayagot" generation - keeping the funk, but bringing the alienation.

They even manage to find enough time to get all reflective. Twice, actually, on Not What You Wanted and All You Do Is Talk. It's the second of those which the most successful, despite a beginning worryingly like a U2 ballad. It's almost as if all the shit BRMC have suffered over the past few years has caused them to, wait for it, lighten up. A bit.

Not that they've forgotten the joy of the grind. Opener Took Out A Loan railroads along on a riff which grates like Trent Reznor's teeth after someone replaced his Candela with industrial strength speed; Berlin has a back'n'forth glam-rock melody which sounds like someone dragging Noddy Holder across broken glass; the wiry, claustrophobic Need Some Air is like they've captured a feral Interpol song and are slowly choking the life out of it with an oily rag.

All grimy, ragged, top drawer stuff. But it's Weapon Of Choice which is the best song here, the best example of the joining up of old BRMC to new BRMC: pissed-off and indignant, but more eloquent with it; steeped in layers of swirling guitars, but applying them with more sophistication.

Given it's gestation, it's fairly amazing that Baby 81 wasn't stillborn. To find it's kicking with such vigor is little short of remarkable. Oh, welcome back BRMC.
- Tim Lee

[oscillations.]

LOL! AMG give it one of the few negative reviews I've seen yet, yet still award it 3.5 stars (the others all have 4). I love when the review & the rating don't match up.

[Adz]

I saw a review that gave it 2 1/2. Basically said it was the first album watered down.

[oscillations.]

SF GATE
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
(4 STARS)

They might claim to be infants on "Baby 81," but their fourth album finds San Francisco's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to be a fully matured outfit. Doing an about-face from 2005's "Howl," the three-piece band has changed its focus from Woody Guthrie's dust-bowl Americana to its own brand of Brit-influenced shoegazing, which it excelled at back when it was aping the Jesus and Mary Chain on its self-titled 2001 debut. BRMC has found its own identity, leaving some necessary spaces in its former wall of blurry sound and blending sharp harmonies with a Led Zeppelin sonic thunder and woozy psychedelic guitars. It makes a fitting frame for BRMC's tales of hallucinatory religiosity and politics. This is one of the few bands around that truly believe music can affect change. -- Jaan Uhelszki

[Adz]

I think Berlin is my new favourite BRMC song.
I can't find the disc for the first album..it's missing :(

[oscillations.]

:'(
my cd case for it is broken

more reviews (all yays!)
AVERSION 4 stars
NY Daily News (extremely positive - calls it the sexiest, hottest CD of the year, which isn't incorrect)
Manchester Evening News 4 STARS

For every random negative review, there are 5 positive ones. That's a comfortable ratio to maintain.

Newswire article about recording process...pretty interesting:
Read it here.

[busyboy]

NME...



BRMC return to remind us why we fell for them in the first place

It's beyond strange to think now, but there was a time when Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were considered, in some circles, even cooler than The Strokes. Of all the class of 2001, Julian and co's West Coast counterpoints were seen as the boys most likely to follow them the whole way. Armed with a debut album of devilish psychedelic garage and unsullied by finishing school, the future looked like being theirs. Until, that is, a lacklustre second album ('Take Them On, On Your Own'), a surly demeanor and simmering band tensions conspired to derail them. In the end, all it took was an inflatable penis presented to them by a fan at NME's V2004 signing tent to send them into meltdown.

They stayed together, just, but this was a changed band. Their reaction was to rip everything apart, removing all traces of the troubled riders they had become. Out went the dark heart, the motorcycle exhaust, the death-engine guitars and roaring political rage. Instead, 'Howl' - a wire-stringed collection of folk songs - slammed the breaks just in time to stop the band careering straight off dead man's curve. But what stops you getting killed doesn't necessarily make you stronger and the Black Rebel of 'Howl' was not the same beast which forced Britain to kneel before their 501s, unkempt hair and murder aesthetic back when The Horrors were anxiously fumbling with the cold bra strap of their first dead girlfriend.

If 'Howl' was the righteous path they had to burn in order to save their souls, then 'Baby 81' sees them roaring back on to the dusty trail they once blazed across the alt.rock landscape. In many ways it's the natural follow-up to their magnificent debut. It might never approach the acid-burnout frenzy of 'Love Burns' or the smack-rage of 'What Ever Happened To My Rock And Roll (Punk Song)', but just look at the track names: 'Killing The Light', 'American X', '666 Conducer'. This is a band firmly recapturing their edge.

"I took out a loan on my empty heart babe/I took out a lone on my lonely soul", snarls Robert Levon Been, as greasy guitars chug into dazed action on opener 'Took Out A Loan'. Yes, these brothers may have survived, but the blues hangs over them like fitted leathers. "Suicide's easy, what happened to the revolution?", growls 'Berlin' - a death machine charged on the electricity from a coke orgy with The Kills - before the glorious single 'Weapon Of Choice' roars into view.

However, while BRMC have been pulling themselves up from Hades' pits, they've somehow acquired something else. It seems that these boys have aspirations extending far beyond being the fashion corpses that we fell in love with. Yep, these guys have, whisper it, pop ambitions as well. Somehow, both the taut 'It's Not What You Wanted' and the Arcade Fire-aping lush organ grinder 'All You Do Is Talk' both manage to sound just like 'All These Things That I've Done' by The Killers. Elsewhere, acoustic guitars lurk beneath the familiar sonic juggernauts and '666 Conducer' is a hyper-powered version of the rattlesnake odes of their last record. Broader still, 'Window' is practically Oasis-like. From the staccato Beatles pianos, '60s guitar solos and, frankly, banal lyrics - "How's it going to feel/When you don't know what's real?" - in some bizarre, alternative reality recording session, a diesel-chugging Noel Gallagher could have crowbarred this into 'Heathen Chemistry'. Things are pushed far too far, however, on 'American X'. BRMC please note, we celebrate your return to fuzzy necro-indie, but that doesn't mean you need to drag it out for nine frigging minutes, let alone conduct the spirit of Doors keyboard wally Ray Manzarek while you stumble aimlessly into a void of dull, never-ending solos.

Never mind, it's not all reimagination, 'Need Some Air' is a breathlessly evil disco of rusted Mary Chain cogs whirling through tar-thick clouds of sleazy-fingered moshers. 'Killing The Light' croons in crooked skeletal falsetto, while final track 'Am I Only' is just incendiary. Like Pixies sucking meths through the gaps in their war-wounded smiles, "Am I only/Only one of you?", asks Peter Hayes sadly, as his acoustics are drowned beneath the epic grind of atomic post-rock guitar walls.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have used up more than their share of rock lives over the years, but amazingly, after dipping so far from the radar, they have clawed their way back with an album encapsulating much of what initially made them such an exciting group. It's a final farewell to the decadence and degradations of the past, and it should take more than an inflated phallus to stop them this time.

Alex Miller

[Adz]

Woops, I meant Window is my new favourite, not Berlin.
Window <333

I find it silly how they end the album. American X was the perfect way to end it. A nine minute epic that sucks everything out of you, it's the climax, then only to have another shot with an average tune.
I actually find the whole album tracklisting a bit of mess.

[friend]

The only song I know from this group is "Salvation." And it's probably one of my all-time favorite songs. How old is that song?

[oscillations.]

My brother got an autographed copy of the CD. I should probably buy my own, though, to support "sells".

"Salvation" is from their debut, which came out in 2000....well 2001 officially.

[oscillations.]

Unnecessary comment from MTV.com:

One gang that might not make the cut this week are Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. While the critics love 'em, the loud garage-psych rockers' last effort — 2005's Howl — peaked lower than its 2003 predecessor, Take Them on, on Your Own. And despite a recent U.K. tour with the Killers, there hasn't been much build behind their new Baby 81, which marks drummer Nick Jago's studio comeback. The band does have something to say this time around, though — the album title refers to Abhilasha Jeyarajah, the 81st victim taken to Kalmunai hospital in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. Nine couples claimed the 4-month-old baby was theirs, and controversy ensued until DNA tests finally confirmed who the real parents were. In about a week, BRMC will know if they have a home — on the charts, that is.

If MTV did their research, they'd know that this album is actually expected to sell more than all of them. And WOC, after dropping, is regaining ground on radio. They are playing an outdoor concert on Kimmel May 3rd, so that will raise awareness as well. With overall sales in the toilet, they should be able to debut Top 50 or 60. I mean, AIR did.

[oscillations.]

I bet it will end up around there permanently, like all the BRMC albums.

INDIE LONDON 4 STARS
LA TIMES 3.5/4

[oscillations.]

The inclusion of the Q & Spin reviews brings it up even more:


www.metacritic.com/music/artists/blackrebelmotorcycleclub/baby81

[oscillations.]

Both the Fratellis & The Horrors have pulled out of the BRMC tour:

From David of BRMC:
Due to an intense 2-year touring schedule, The Fratellis are suffering from extreme exhaustion and unfortunately had to pull out of the first 7 West Coast dates as well as all their own headlining performances.

The Horrors, however, were forced to drop out for very different reasons. Their record label, Loog Records, is currently experiencing dire financial difficulties and consequently, could not afford to fund a North American tour.

We're truly sorry for anyone who was looking forward to seeing either of these support acts state-side. A new opening band will be announced soon, so keep an eye out on the news page.

[oscillations.]

THEY ARE ON KIMMEL TONIGHT.

[oscillations.]

Drowned In Sound
www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/9316
7/10

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Record Collection/WB’s Spider-Man 3 soundtrack won’t do as well as the movie, though it could do as much as 20k, while RCA’s Black Rebel Motorcyle Club are up next with the critically praised Baby 81, now slated to sell around 15k.

Pretty much on target. Tonight's Kimmel appearance should help.

[oscillations.]

Wow, they were wonderful! "Berlin" sounded incredible live.

[WotUNeed]

cherrycrush said:

Wow, they were wonderful! "Berlin" sounded incredible live.

I didn't watch Kimmel but I ended up catching most of this performance, and I have to agree. I'm usually lukewarm toward BRMC (like 'em but don't love 'em) but if that performance is any indication, I may very well need to revise my opinion.

[joker]

Smash Kimmel performance!

Hopin' for a top 50 debut next week.

[oscillations.]

UGH PITCHFORK 4.5 ( ) I kind of expected this review from them. I kept saying "it will be below a 5, because they hate slick production values" and everyone I said this to agreed. And they delivered. So we can move on.
It just sucks that it will bring down their metacritic score, as will AMG.


Yup, they brought them down to a 69. Oh well. Hopefully it can go back up. Fuckers.

[Adz]

Hmm dissapointing.

[roentgenizdat]

BRMC = "Boldy Romantic Manly Children"?

When Black Rebel Motorcycle Club sat down with Spinner for their Interface interview, we gave them a little challenge: Describe the band in four words using only the letters B, R, M and C. Guitarist Peter Hayes was quick to respond: "Boldy Romantic Manly Children."

Turns out BMRC is a rather popular acronym. Search for it on the Internet and you're likely to get Boston Region Medical Center. "That's OK," he said. They deserve it. They help people ... in a different way."

The band went on to play three killer acoustic numbers from 'Baby 81' and chatted up about run-ins with actual biker gangs, and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Interface Setlist
1. 'Not What You Wanted'
2. 'Weapon of Choice'
3. '666 Conducer'
4. 'Interview'

[roentgenizdat]

Album debuts at #46 with 14K copies sold.

[oscillations.]

Nice. Highest debut to date; #15 in the UK. Overall reviews are very strong.
I'm seeing them in less than a month.