If you wanted to make an effective argument in favor of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's career, musical relativism would be the best place to start. There's not much doubt, especially after listening to Baby 81, as to what BRMC does, nor could it be ignored that they do it particularly well. The band's four albums have overtly displayed their method: well-worn rock symbology adorned with modern flair and presented as variations on a common theme.
While BRMC's update of one of rock's most lingering yarns (itself never more than a performative construct) can at times feel like a well-executed recipe, it more often comes across as a cold, cynical ploy to revive rock's extended adolescence. Past themes of rebellion, self-empowerment, and rock'n'roll salvation are in full force on their new album, and the mythology that started to pervade rock music after the Summer of Love-- especially the hippie blooze of T. Rex, the Rolling Stones' satanic majesty, and the equally-orchestrated rune-lore of Led Zeppelin-- remain the band's preeminent generic signposts.
On their first three records, BRMC's paint-by-numbers psych-blues approach resulted in some pretty good songs. From their 2000 debut, "Whatever Happened to My Rock 'N Roll" had the branding power of an Apple ad, but it was fun nonetheless. Take Them On, On Your Own's "Stop" was a dude-ish Slider update, and Howl's title track was an effectively whiny, densely engineered blues meditation. There's nothing even remotely as enjoyable on Baby 81, however: The closest they come is the piano-driven "Window", which starts promisingly before spinning its wheels for six minutes, and first single "Weapon of Choice", which strangely feels like another band imitating the Club.
Most unfortunately, Baby furthers the band's ham-handed thematic extractions of evil from the everyday. Love is lethal, women are insidious, sin is everywhere, rock is redemption, you know the drill. For whatever reason, they still think it effective to use "666" in a song title, but without any hint of the theatrical appropriation of the beast-sign's former employers. Here, the number's "conducer" is some chick, the star of a "Sympathy for the Devil"-type narrative complete with a "how do you do" play on words. The band's more recognizably annoying Harley-revving guitars underscore "Took Out a Loan", which uses an empty heart as collateral, ostensibly at the First Bank of Eternal Damnation, and "Berlin", a swaggering Bolan rip about a vague search for romantic redemption. The song's refrain expresses Baby's leaden attempt at quasi-political macho vigor: "Suicide's easy/ What happened to the revolution?"
On the band's MySpace page, Peter Hayes describes the type of empowerment the band strives for on Baby 81: "Personal revolt. It's gotta start somewhere, and if it ain't on a personal level, it's too easy to beat the crap out of governments with words. Start with yourself and hopefully you get enough people doing it on their own and we can all come together." With supposedly meaningful songs, however, bands don't get points just for trying, and BRMC's calculated notions of revolution and struggle are vague to the point of meaninglesness, with the clanky effect of a carefully-worded political stump speech. But the group soldiers on, their main weapon a lack of self-awareness disguised as apathetic cool. Despite critics continuing to brazenly compare them to the Jesus and Mary Chain (it's the hairstyle, dudes), the truth is that BRMC is a big, dumb band who writes big, dumb songs, proven by Baby's "All You Do Is Talk", which is separated from the Fray by only a few melodramatic degrees. There is nothing inherently bad about over-earnest rock clichés and thuddingly obvious arrangements, and there are quite a few bands who can pull it off very well. But BRMC's problem is that they don't seem to recognize their superficiality and continue to make music with the pose-striking potency of a glossy Budweiser Music sign hanging in a college bar.
