First, a point your reviewer has wanted to make for a while. We've had a few moans from you along the way about the way you disagree with some of the 'genre' categories we use. You know the kind of thing: "you reviewed such and such and it's not a 'post-rock' record, it's an 'indie' record etc."
For what it's worth, we came up with the genre headings in a feverish 10 minutes when we created this monster and with hindsight I admit we did forget the odd one ('Electronica' especially I confess I missed at the time), but really this raises a bigger issue that tends to bug me: that we live in a world where we seem to NEED genre 'signposts' thrust upon us. For example, go onto the excellent www.amazon.com or whatever and you want to buy a CD. You click in the relevant places and buy your CDs and they suggest you'd like such and such an artist because they're 'similar' of type/ genre or whatever. Or you pick up a decent magazine (say 'Uncut') and even they're at it: "Like this one? Then try these..." Yeah, yeah, we all need pointers and suggestions, but aren't we missing something here? Like the fact we might like to try to delve around and enjoy all sorts of albums simply because they're transcendent, fresh and suggest different paths. Not simply because they're in the same vein as something else? I know I do and if you're reading this, chances are you like to wander around a bit too.
So you may well ask what all this waffle has to do with BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB'S third album, the really rather excellent "Howl". And you'd be entirely fair to do so. But think about it for a second: it says 'Alt.Country' up there, doesn't it? As in Americana? As in folk, blues and not the blistering, brooding rock this band have been peddling as their trademark thus far? Indeed it does. Has your reviewer finally lost it for good?
Well, hopefully not yet anyway, because "Howl" really is quite a stylistic volte-face from the band's sometimes stodgy second album, "Take Them On, On Your Own". It was made predominantly by guitarist Peter Hayes and bassist Robert Levon Been (his real name, NOT Robert Turner, it seems) on acoustic instruments (acoustic guitars, pianos, harmonicas, trumpets and even trombones are thrown eagerly into the stew) and temporarily dismissed drummer Nick Jago only resumed his position on the drumstool towards the end of the recording.
And, amazingly, "Howl" (reputedly named after Allen Ginsberg's seminal poem of the same name) really does echo albums such as Neil Young's "After The Goldrush", The Rolling Stones' "Let It Bleed", The Band's "Music From Big Pink" and - for a little more recent perspective - Uncle Tupelo's "March 16-20th, 1992". None of which you'd expect to be referenced during an album by San Francisco's three none-more-black-clad gents. But there you go. And if you're open-minded enough, you should still be able to like the earlier BRMC material AND realise this third album is a huge leap forward worthy of embrace.
Opener "Shuffle Your Feet" makes you realise they really can pull this stuff off. Built around stomps, claps, low-down and dirty acoustic guitars, harmonica and gospel backing vocals, it's celebratory and earthy and features a great chorus ("Time won't save our souls!") that's destined to be a mass singalong in concert.
Songs like "Devil's Waitin'", "Fault Line" and "Restless Sinner", meanwhile, are even more downhome and hewn from an ancient backwoods tradition. "Devil's Waitin'" finds Peter Hayes croaking "I've seen the battle and I've seen the war and the life I've here is the life I've been sold" over a redemptive bluesy-folk that wouldn't be out of place on the Wilco/ Billy Bragg "Mermaid Avenue" albums; "Fault Line" is again predominantly acoustic and plaintive and dominated by Hayes' philosophical vocal, while "Restless Sinner" dunks the bucket deep down the gospel/ folk well and finds Hayes singing vivid, God-fearing stuff ("He'll beat you with a cross and a sickle as he helps you in") that David Eugene Edwards would surely love.
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Yet it's with songs like "Ain't No Easy Way", "Promise" and "Gospel Song" that the new, improved BMRC really hit their stride. "Ain't No Easy Way" is one of the most immediate things here: a whiskey-soaked delta stomp akin to the best of "Led Zeppelin 3" with stinging slide guitar, drums like Meg White's sitting in and even tambourines that sound heroic; "Gospel Song" finds Hayes singing "I will walk with Jesus 'til I can't come anymore" like a cracker Jason Pierce while the guitar motif flirts with Robert Johnson/ The Stones' "Love In Vain" and - perhaps best of all - there's "Promise", with its' sweeping, elegant pianos and drums making like it could have come straight out of The Band's "Music From Big Pink". Brass (trombones!) feature strongly and the imploring chorus "Your eyes have opened and you've got to go on!" may well be the most affecting moment here.
Occasionally, the more traditional BMRC shadow lurks around the corner, like on the taut'n'wired "Weight Of The World" - with its' keening, descending chorus - or the title track, which is drenched in organ and militaristic drumming and notably more electric guitar, not to mention Hayes' murderously muttering "You try so hard to be cool", but even these are notable advances in themselves and suggest further ways ahead for our new favourite men in black.
OK, there are a few moments you could take or leave. "Still Suspension Holds You Tight" finds Hayes as unrepentent as ever ("You take them on, on your own 'til you die"), though the Uncle Tupelo-ish front porch strumalong is a little to languid to convince. "Complicated Situation" has some nice, wheezy harmonica but isn't much of a song and "Sympathetic Noose" is a bit too undernourished to live up to its' title, though it does precede the nightmarish, funereal closer "The Line" which ends with a forlorn Hayes repeating "when did you stop caring?" in a voice not unlike a young Robert Smith. Which probably sounds kinda quixotic, but after "Howl"s many jolts and pleasant surprises probably makes some kind of lateral sense.
Besides, this hack still believes it's good to be shaken up now and again by our best bands, and after the potential rut BMRC looked like getting stuck in after the overblown "Take Them On...", "Howl" is a startling sea change that enjoys embracing and joyfully mugging genres, which - when it's done with this much conviction - is of course how it should be.
Vive la difference.
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