Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 30/04/07
Label: Island

Now that the brothers Reid have buried their hatchet deeper than Nuclear waste needs to go and reformed the Jesus & Mary Chain, do their American imitators really serve a further purpose? When they arrived on that sonic Ark that came from across the Atlantic in the wake of The Strokes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's blistering feedback and leather jacket aggression was a welcome blast after the insipid horrors that we'd been enduring up to that point - the New Acoustic Movement, Coldplay, the lack of a war on terror.

But after the bluesy acoustic aberration that was "Howl", Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have decided it best to reintroduce themselves with, well, more of the same. What's more, at an hour and fourteen songs, this "Baby…" is bloated and bursting from its nappies - and that goes for the songs as well as duration. As well as the thundering guitars and Peter Hayes' petulant sneers, "Windows", say, has been burdened with thick blinds of lumpy piano and strings, while "666 Conductor" and recent single "Weapon Of Choice" lack turbo-powered oomph.

It's something of a shame, as "Baby 81" picks up towards the end. "Need Some Air" is the kind of no-frills, dumb-thrills grind which marked their debut, while in "Killing The Light" the tension is ratcheted up with taunting "ooo ooo ooo" vocals and siren atmospherics. "American X", meanwhile, is blessed with an epic expansiveness.

But more than anything, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's continuing attempts to self-mythologise as the very embodiment of scuzzy cool merely end up making them seem anything but. The clichés abound - wittering on about the devil, rock'n'roll and all that jazz surely ought to be given a rest by now. Hell will be full of grumpy demons all delighting in exploring your innards with red-hot pokers, not lank haired dudes on the pull in sunglasses to block out the flames.

In interviews, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have harrumphed on about how "Baby 81" is all about personal revolution and change, starting within before moving on to conquer the world. It's a shame, then, that they didn't bother to write a record an album that lived up to such lofty ideals. Where they arrived in a cloud of malevolent attitude and dead-eyed grouching, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club seem now to be roaring down a Route 666 of smoke and mirrors.

    by Luke Turner