Black Rebel Motorcyle Club (BRMC)
Baby 81
Label: RCA
Back in September 2005 when we reviewed BRMC’s Howl and live Minneapolis show, we wrote:
On Monday night, B.R.M.C. took the stage at Minneapolis’ Fine Line Music Cafe with two agendas. A). Kick off with nü-BRMC: religious lyrics, American acoustic folky-blues, an unappreciative crowd, repetitive verses ala Dylan, and then B). Break out the old stuff, rock out, pretend the previous songs never existed. REPEAT… Look out – next record could be something else completely different.”
And different it was, indeed. Baby 81 blends blues heavy guitar with droning, repetitive rhythms — pulling from a myriad of influences while finally sounding like…just themselves.
In an exclusive interview on Friday, Perfect Porridge had the opportunity to chat with group co-founder Peter Hayes about the new album, the changeup in tour openers and what’s in his CD player right now (care to guess?):
Perfect Porridge: Where are you?
Peter Hayes, BRMC: I’m in L.A. getting ready to go to rehearsal – then headed to Phoenix to catch our tour bus.
Baby 81 is markedly different than your three previous albums. Were the songwriting sessions different than in the past?
We used the same writing process from Howl, which was no limitations. If an acoustic guitar sounds better, than do it. We’d record 12-13 different guitar parts and pick and choose which were best. That’s different than our second album [Take Them On, On Your Own] where we didn’t have that process and limited it to only 3-4 guitar parts.
I read that a lot of what influenced the sound on Howl was the music you guys were listening to at the time. These days, what are you listening to that shaped Baby 81?
Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, but not for recording. More for pitch and tweaking Pro Tools to play around with the recording options.
There was noticeable stylistic gap between your earlier two records and Howl. It seems Baby 81 bridges the gap between those two sounds. Do you agree?
Yeah, I suppose it does somewhat tie the sounds together. Especially when you consider that Baby 81 is louder. But from Day 1 we’ve been saying we’re big fans of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash (but everyone just kept saying Jesus and the Mary Chain). You’ll find we’re actually fans of lots of different kinds of music.
Speaking of, what’s in your CD player right now?
Ha. It’s actually a Johnny Cash boxed set I got for my birthday. It has this huge picture book, five CDs and a DVD. It features all this 25 year-old stuff you’ve never heard.
Where will BRMC be two years from now?
I don’t want to think about it, but I guess hopefully still touring on this record. That would mean it’s done well. It would be nice to have a moment to step outside the band eventually and live a little. I’d like to move back to a farm and experience life in a different way someday in the future.
Both the Horrors and Fratellis spontaneously cancelled their slots as your tour openers yesterday and today. What happened?
Perhaps there’s something in the English water? I’m not really sure. I don’t know if I’ve heard the excuses. Maybe it’s something in the U.S. water? Haha.
Who will be opening?
Well, we have the Black Angels for a lot of the tour, and they’re who we wanted from the beginning. We also have Eastern Conference Champions and the Cobbs. It’ll be great because it’s a bunch of friends out on tour.
We met Eastern Conference Champions at SXSW and really enjoyed their new EP. Their music is vastly different than yours. Do you know them well?
We did shows with them in D.C. and Philadelphia awhile back. I really enjoy stepping out of our comfort zone and the opportunity to introduce bands and fans to new music. I’m not into it being such a huge competition between bands all the time. That’s not helping music. We should try to make the show as diverse as possible.
BRMC play Minneapolis’ First Avenue May 22. Perfect Porridge is contributing to the Official BRMC Tourzine over at Filter Magazine here.
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