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Baby 81 | Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
RCA Records | 1st May

Review by Jigantor

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RCA Records
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Sounds like … yet another garage-rock band.

The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club really only have one idea: a blues drawl over fuzzy rock guitar. Now, this is by no means a bad idea. It's just that, well, there's so much of it. Baby 81 goes for 60 minutes and, like everything Dallas Frasca has ever recorded, all their songs just blend into each other. To be fair, 'All You Do Is Talk' starts with extended string noodling, and 'Killing the Light' even uses compound time(!). But the rest of the songs are basically medium pace, fuzzy garage rock. Like every other pub band.

The lack of distinguishing features is made worse by the fact that half the songs remind me of other songs. Now don't get me wrong: they're not blatantly stealing riffs á la Jet. It's just that their songs all sound so similar, I think my mind starts wandering. So the opening riff of 'Took Out A Loan' becomes Metallica's 'Some Kind Of Monster', 'All You Do Is Talk' becomes Dido's 'See The Sun' and so on. The lyrics don't help: Baby 81 is full of unmemorable but vaguely pretentious lines like 'you wanna pick something up/you gotta lay it down', or 'your lucky words don't bleed/you tie the end of all we see'. Apparently they're supposed to be political or religious or something.

I want to emphasize that this is by no means a bad album. It's perfectly acceptable Triple J rock. It's pleasant enough listening for the most part, and on occasion they hit the mark ('Cold Wind', 'Weapon Of Choice'). But it's nothing that you haven't heard before. If you like rock music, or if you like to be kinda 'alt-trendy' (after all, BMRC do have the coolest logo in the world), Baby 81 will make you perfectly happy. Just don't set your expectations too high.

6 out of 10