Black Rebel MotorcycleClub - Ain't No Easy Way

Thu 1st Sep, 2005 in Music Reviews

It seems as though it’s been a long pause in between Black Rebel Motorcycle Club releases, but perhaps this is a good thing. While asymmetrical haircuts and skinny ties fop around on the radio, lulling your average listener into a mediocre trance, BRMC have been setting the wheels into motion to release their third album. It certainly appears that the element of surprise is going to work in their favour.

Howl is the first album from BRMC’s new label home at RCA Records (having also housed Elvis Presley, The Strokes and Ray Lamontagne). Due for release in early September the album sounds like quite the quantum leap from the melancholy atmospherics of previous albums B.R.M.C. and Take Them On, On Your Own. You may grimace at the prospect of the band infusing their style with folk, country, blues and gospel, but the forthcoming single suggests the band are quite comfortably sidling up to new genre possibilities.

If first single Ain’t No Easy Way is anything to go from, Howl could be the album that those of us tired of relentless fashion rock are salivating to experience. A far cry from the band’s signature gritty distortion and Jesus and Mary Chain kickbacks, Ain’t No Easy Way is more Gimme Shelter than You Trip Me Up. From the first inclination of the country inspired guitar, this track is comfortably familiar, retaining that familiar veil of distortion but throwing in some country licks. It sounds like something you might have heard on vinyl as a kid: timeless structuring and a hint of dust on the production gives you the feeling you’ve been reared on this stuff.

The canonised vocals are a nice touch, plumping up the track to its full swaggering potential, but it’s the western shoot-out stomp that seals the deal. Tambourine rings and the kick drum is pummelled as the song seems to jump from one side of the room to the other. The ascending twangs sound uncannily Cruel Sea for a moment, until Peter Hayes resumes his raspy, stretched-to-the-limit vocals.

At two-and-a-half minutes, it’s barely enough to satisfy. Bring on the new album I say!