Black Rebel Motorcycle Club choose their stage effects to match their music. Wreathed in smoke and dressed in tastefully tattered black, the threesome conjure up a hurricane of sound so dense and vital you would swear they had another guitarist stashed away in the back, hidden behind the smoke machine. Guitarist Peter Hayes and bassist Robert Turner stoically grind out rock the likes of which has been neither seen nor heard for years.
The band’s facial hair, chops and slouches are reminiscent of the Strokes, but there all fruitful comparison ends. While the Strokes are discontented and hoarse and definitively tied to the New York sound of predecessors The Ramones and The Velvet Underground, BRMC are brooding and intense, hoarse only when it suits them. Though only drummer Nick Jago is from Britain, the band has an undeniably British sound, with a self-conscious tip of the hat to the Stone Roses. “Rifles” had more pretensions than the Strokes could muster, sounding a little like U2 might if you dragged them through mud for a couple of albums. “Whatever Happened To My Rock ’N’ Roll (punk song)” has more genuine punk attitude than the stateside poseurs can pull off either, with its relentless insistence on the glory of one chord played very, very loud.
Turner played his hollow-bodied bass guitar with such fervour it was hard to tell whether the booming, overblown sound was the result of a fuzz pedal or simply a guitar pushed to its limits, until it became all but indistinguishable from the thump of the bass drum. Hayes wiggled his hips in the prescribed provocative fashion, creating roiling layers of guitar haze in truly elegant style. The band wasn’t big on audience interaction, but from the heads bobbing in the audience, they didn’t need to be. Though technically opening for British art-rockers Spiritualized, BRMC has built up enough of a buzz around the place that the crowd was packed from the beginning of the set and needed no converting to their cause.
Their songs are halfway between napkin-scribblings and classics, running the gauntlet between stodgy remakes and retro-cool from rock’s heyday. On the manic “White Hands,” lead by a frantic bass, Hayes challenged with true rock and roll sneer: “Jesus, when you going to come back?/ Jesus, I dare you to come back.” The highlight of the evening was the swaggering single, “Spread Your Love” which built from its inflated Beatles conceit to a grinding, howling climax. Black leather and dishevelment are back.
