Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - 'Howl' (Echo)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Not with a howl, yet with a whisper - but as with most things told in whispers, it's something worth listening carefully to. Unlike as is customary, however, here's something you can spread around. Tell the others. They should know.
Because few things sound the same around here - there are moments of familiarity, glimpses of that brazen past, but there's a calm to it now. Things are quieter, more considered - better. When writing a new record, far too few bands ever let the consideration that, in all honesty, they've sounded exactly the same on all the other ones hold them back from continuing to revisit that comfortable old ground. If they're not tired of playing it, we won't be tired of hearing it, right? Wrong. Black Rebel Motorcylce Club, somewhat surprisingly, know the value of a little variation.
The main difference? Simple - acoustic guitars instead of electric ones. It's not an acoustic album, but it's incredibly refreshing to hear a band whose sound you thought you could easily define change so much for the better by just rocking out on a slightly different instrument. True, bits of it are exactly the same as BRMC songs of yore, retaining the structure and grit, but just using a little less electricity, the aptly named opener 'Shuffle Your Feet' for one. But there also seems to be a change of mindset to match the change in sound. Take the title-track; whilst the heaviest thing on this record, it would on any other have been the slow, measured series of dark thuds that provided the respite from all the bedlam.
But the desire to diversify reaches further than the sound, a new found melancholy seeping into the entire feel of the record. A country influence is particularly prevalent, the marvellous 'Devil's Waitin'' not only taking that as its sonic cue but absorbing it in to the lyrical content and delivery, musing on religion and the afterlife in a desperately sad gospel. It's the most sincere you've ever heard them sound. It makes them seem real, able to connect on a more emotive level. They come across as people now, rather than mysterious figures emerging from stage smoke with only mountainous riffs by way of communication. There's genuine soul.
Could they, you wonder, have done this earlier in their career? Have they for some reason been holding back, hiding their acoustic guitars and Johnny Cash records from public view until they'd harvested a faithful audience with big, brash rock songs as bait? The stylishness of 'Howl' suggests they're accomplished enough at this newly revealed side to their game for that to be the case. But the best part of the record is the combination of BRMC old and new, the huge drum sound on 'Ain't No Easy Way' that manages to make the sliding of an acoustic guitar possibly the heaviest thing they've ever laid down. The rock doesn't come in the volume any more - it comes in the delivery.
But whilst they've learned how to use a harmonica especially well, they perhaps aren't as clued up on keeping their new approach to things as consistently invigorating as ways of old. By the time a lacklustre 'Weight of the World' comes around, the novelty of what's new has worn off, so you start to concentrate on whether the songs themselves are particularly noble. And by this unwelcome mid album slump, you deduce there's currently not as much to write home about as there was at the kick off. What they're getting at in 'Restless Sinner' for example they already had down on 'Devil's Waitin'', and 'Gospel Song' for a long time just sounds like they're attempting REM's 'Everybody Hurts' but getting it wrong. It's all in the tempo lads, there's no need to rush it. And you've gotten the lyrics wrong. It's almost as if you're attempting a completely different song. Almost.
Thankfully however they pick up the game to round things off. Both the charming 'Complicated Situation' and more raucously the Smashing Pumpkins aping 'Sympathetic Noose' are splendid exercises in simplicity, the lads letting things come to them rather than trying hard to make them work as they did just a few tracks back.
It probably is their best record, at least in terms of ambition. Yet only time will tell whether it's their peak on its own merit, or because it's such a change in direction from the preceding duo of dark rock albums. However, if the long-term status of the band is your concern rather than where to place this in a hierarchy of their output, then 'Howl' can only be a blessing. Clearly, there's more to this lot than we first thought.
Artists in this article: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
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