Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Beat the Devil’s Tattoo
Abstract Dragon/Vagrant

Friends and I used to have discussions about who we would let into our cool club (the adult kind, not the school boy kind) if we ever owned one. The kind of place where only the hippest cats on planet earth would be allowed to drink, fuck, and create. Not that excluding people is necessarily cool, but we considered it more of a human dress code, if you will. And to be alive certainly wasn’t a prerequisite. In fact, it always turned out that the guest list created during any given discussion included mostly dead heroes. Somehow, death made you cooler. So, who would be allowed into such an exclusive club? Well, people like Neal Cassady, Pierre Trudeau, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Joe Strummer, Charles Bukowski, Sailor Jerry, Janis Joplin, and Tom Waits, that’s who. There was always an argument over whether Johnny Cash should make it in or not. Being tagged as a bible thumper has its drawbacks. Anyway, I always used to, and still do, imagine the ever-evolving line-up of house bands that would play this club. Thee Hypnotics every once in awhile. The Stooges once a week. And Black Rebel Motorcycle Club as often as possible.

Not that BRMC are better than The Stooges (because they’re not), but full-out rock n’ roll destruction is a fever of moments, where as a consistent, wailing, fuzzy, foggy, sexual, black torrent of heady rawk n’ roll just seems to create the perfect cool vibes to mess along to on any given night. That’s what BRMC have given us since day one; a steady, haunting dose of salvation, desperation, redemption, and love awash in red light madness and bad-ass balladry. The loss of drummer Nick Jago (he’s been replaced by ex-Raveonettes drummer Leah Shapiro) hasn’t slowed the beat one bit and the muse for this album is Edgar Allan Poe, who’s perched atop his regular seat at the end of the bar, drinking absinthe and talking to Nico. Beat the Devil’s Tattoo was conceived in the same house as Howl, and the impact of that is felt right away, as the title track kicks things off to a dusty, steely, gospel n’ blues start before the rest of the album takes off down the long, familiar highway of garage n’ soul spotted here and there by irresistible roadside attractions, like mustachioed fire-eaters, tattooed snake-handlers, riverside baptisms, cloud watching, and sweet, brown-eyed girls in see-through summer dresses. Its destination, of course, is the great gig at the club of cool.

Listen to “Conscience Killer” from Beat the Devil’s Tattoo!