Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81
NME.COM feature on Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81 album including album review, artwork, tracks, listen now, tour dates, discography and more.
Album Review
Release date: 30 April 2007
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Baby 81
BRMC return to remind us why we fell for them in the first place
It’s beyond strange to think now, but there was a time when Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were considered, in some circles, even cooler than The Strokes. Of all the class of 2001, Julian and co’s West Coast counterpoints were seen as the boys most likely to follow them the whole way. Armed with a debut album of devilish psychedelic garage and unsullied by finishing school, the future looked...
Tracklisting click track to read more
- Took Out A Loan
- Berlin
- Weapon of Choice
- Windows
- Cold Wind
- Not What You Wanted
- 666 Conducer
- All You Do Is Talk
- Lien On Your Dreams
- Need Some Air
- Killing The Light
- American X
- Am I Only
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81 YouTube Videos
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club News
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Robert Levon Been fined for hitting fan in the eye with a bottle
Bassist ordered to pay £15,800 in damages and given a three-month suspended sentence
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club announce December UK tour and ticket details
Band set for seven UK gigs later in 2010
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have equipment stolen
Band lose kit after one of their lockers was broken into
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81: Wikipedia Album Entry
After completely (and successfully) rehauling their sound for 2005's Howl, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club shelved their low-key Americana leanings, reburied their roots music influences, and retreated to a new version of their old, noisy sound. Baby 81 is a big rock record with walls of crunchy guitars, thundering drums, and lots of volume that sounds like a cross between Oasis and the Jesus and Mary Chain at their most conventional. It's also an over-polished, over-thought, and under-inspired record that forsakes everything good that the group accomplished on Howl (subtlety, emotion weight, solid songcraft) in favor of stale melodies, vacant lyrics, and clichéd bad-boy rock & roll posturing. Songs like "666 Conducer," "Berlin" (which is saddled with the howlingly bad chorus "Suicide's easy/What happened to the revolution?"), the slick new wave bandwagon-hopper "American X," and the clunky "Lien on Your Dreams" are like paint-by-numbers rockers that even JAMC would set aside as too bland. The Mary Chain comparison is blindingly obvious, but maybe a bit unfair to the Reid brothers; even at their most generic, they always had the evil force of their personalities to help sell their pose, but BRMC has no personality to fall back on. This album slinks past in an embarrassing haze of forgettable songs and missed opportunities. Even the couple of tunes that start off promising, like the moody "All You Do Is Talk" or "Am I Only" (which teases by opening with a quiet acoustic guitar passage), are ruined by the hackneyed production and the overall tired, desperate feeling that pervades the album. After Howl, it seemed like the group was poised to make some very good, honest-sounding records. Instead they have succumbed to an ill-fated attempt to get back in the rock & roll game, and it's a painfully disappointing artistic failure.
Review by Tim Sendra
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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81 Lyrics
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Took Out a Loan Lyrics
I took out a loan on my empty heart, babe
I took out a loan for my patient soul
And I feel alive as long as I donât need you
And I feel alive as long as I keep hold
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - American X Lyrics
Close your eyes to the world that you see
And open wide to the one in your dreams
Thereâs nothing left that you wanna believe
Foreign eyes have been torn at the seams
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Killing the Light Lyrics
She said, "You're killing the light
Youâll never see it again"
"We come to suffer", I said
"I wonât be fooled by the light
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Need Some Air Lyrics
You wanna pick somethinâ up, you've gotta lay it down
You wanna turn somethinâ on, you gotta set it off
You wanna let something in, you've gotta tear it out
I wanna feel the sun, I just need some air
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Lien on Your Dreams Lyrics
Thereâs a lien on your dreams that keeps you going under
And a hole in the floor, drops us all together
You can fight all you like, thereâs no way to hide
All the lines on your face show, youâve got no place in here
More Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Lien on Your Dreams Lyrics
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - All You Do is Talk Lyrics
Help yourself, donât say a thing
Your love won't show
In anything at all
If all you do is talk
More Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - All You Do is Talk Lyrics
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - 666 Conducer Lyrics
No one knows her name but they see her youth and use her
Sheâs feeling free and everything she sees is truth
Sheâs seventeen, sheâs got everything she needs to lose
Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh no
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - It's Not What You Wanted Lyrics
You know youâve got a lot to learn
You feel it but your heart wonât burn
The fear is runninâ every nerve
You're turning to the ones youâve hurt
More Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - It's Not What You Wanted Lyrics
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Cold Wind Lyrics
Canât change all the things Iâve done, I know
Iâm chasing the reason and my soul
I feel it gone, I feel it gone
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Window Lyrics
Turn your eyes from the window
So you wonât see this world
The walls are closing inward
Thereâs nowhere left to turn
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Weapon of Choice Lyrics
I gotta speak and you want to listen up
But there is no time to feast your eyes
You want it all but the world wonât give it up
Up to the edge, your star will rise
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Berlin Lyrics
Hey there, little lovers, why we fightinâ with each other?
Ainât no use in cryinâ like the others
Weâre fools in need, fools to believe
Weâre all fools in need, too foolish to believe
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Am I Only Lyrics
Nothing seems to show
The feelings come and go
And everythingâs so strange
The people never change
