IN REVIEW: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Wrong Creatures"

Over the course of a career that is now twenty years running, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have slowly built a reputation for dependability. Never turning in the type of smash hit to threaten the band's street cred and never truly falling off to the point of irrelevance, BRMC have had the privilege of maintaining their stature without resorting to tired gimmicks or drastic measures of any kind. They came close on occasion (such as the acoustic-backed Howl and the overly abrasive instrumental record The Effects of 333), but they've since settled in to a strurdy groove. Having said that, it would admittedly be nice to hear something drastic from this band again, as the more albums they put out with the fewer surprises threatens indifference.

Wrong Creatures, the group's eighth LP, follows the longest break without new material in their career to date; this record arrives nearly five years after Specter At the Feast, an album that saw them refine some facets of their sound and resulted in perhaps their most consistent overall record. Wrong Creatures more or less picks up where Specter At the Feast left off, with a pair of energetic rockers and a hazy slow burner that won't put fans in mind of anything but Black rebel Motorcycle Club. I can't be mad at these songs; in fact they're dependably good songs that announce the band's re-entry in most reassuring fashion. For those who aren't anxious for change, these songs will be a relief.

What happens next, as in the band's wheelhouse as it seems, is kind of a drastic departure; Echo glides on an easy bass groove and slowly fills with sound as it goes, bringing with it an impassioned, soulful vocal. BRMC have always had a penchant for the expansive, but they've rarely done anything this majestic, this gorgeous. It's exactly the kind of change this band can pull off effortlessly, one that's subtle enough that Echo fits alongside the other songs without difficulty, but one that's stylistically substantial enough to give pause to those paying attention.

As thrilling as this development is, the majority of Wrong Creatures stays more or less in the band's comfort zone (although there is another departure later on in the warped carnival vibe of Circus Bazooko), alternating between hazy epics and taut rockers; this doesn't make for a bad listen, but it may be asking for more devotion than some may be willing to spend. There's nothing so wrong with more of the same, and the record does vary it up enough to avoid outright fatigue, but it can be a bit of a slog (especially in the album's mid-section, where its longest songs are all piled in together).

Still, at this point in the band's career, how much evolution can we expect? For that matter, how much do we really want? There are plenty of bands throwing it all at the wall, seeing what sticks, and maintaining a small fraction of their original fan bases through it all. Maybe a slow evolution, as stagnating as it sometimes may seem, is what keeps people like me listening to bands like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in 2018, instead of writing them off and letting them fade into obscurity.

January 12, 2018 • Abstract Dragon
Highlights King of Bones • Echo • Carried From the Start