Who cares whether or not they sound like Dr and The Medics? Certainly not James Berry. He’s not having any of it. Like a ‘glam’ to the slaughter, Crud attends the Rebel’s recent gig in ye olde Kentish Town in London.
13/05/2002
Two static white lights shine eloquently across the Forum’s theatrical cavern, catching a glitter-ball, crossing, throwing a soft protective sheath across the stage and casting tiny glowing sprites across the vast ceiling. Behind the luminous curtain, in the relative darkness, just out of reach but leading the swelling feeling of just-being-there like it is their calling, BRMC are languidly unfurling the final enigmatic ace in tonight’s pack. As the deep rumbling beats build like mist behind the lifting gospel inertia of ‘Salvation’, churning bass creeping through the gaps, slight jangling guitar adding the celebration, the lights gradually raise behind the three uniformly romantic figures on stage – awkward hair, awkward gait, clothed head to toe in black, Peter Hayes’ lit cigarette still smoking on his keyboard. Nobody (that’s NOONE) works silhouette like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
This is the key to it all. We probably wouldn’t be here if they were clad in big shorts and chains, lit by lasers and pyrotechnics. We wouldn’t be here if they had a sponsorship deal with Kappa or even if they looked like they’d spent the last 2 years plundering New York’s thrift stores’ hip-retro bargain-bins. Aside from the fact that that wouldn’t lend them to the shadows so well, over and above all else we are here to see them. We are here to strive for the fragments of their shattered emotions as they flake off, to bask in the glorious incommunicable fug that surrounds then, to hear what THEY are saying to US. We’ve never experienced anyone like them before and thus the fact that the songs have a loose JAMC foundation beneath them is neither here nor there. We are here to see them.
This is none more stressed though than with the addition of their British drummer, Nick Jago. If you’re looking for the heightened, wax-styled, gang mentality that their name hints at – you certainly got it. If you’re looking for something that was absolutely meant to be – you got it. Playing his first set of UK shows since US immigration obviously gave into his ‘it’s not where you are, it’s who you are, man’ approach to illegal alien status stateside, the reception to his intro by Peter Hayes halfway through is nothing short of rapturous. And it’s only now we realise what was missing (more than missing in retrospect – hanging loose, gaping, flapping in the wind) when ex-Verve sticksbloke Pete Salisbury filled in first time round. And the impression that was imprinted onto us even then. Not doubting his past or ability, but Pete Salisbury has just been put to shame by a kid with a spaced baby-faced pout and better hair. The rapture isn’t just for who he is, but for what he is and what he isn’t.
And he brings the songs alive like you wouldn’t believe. At best ‘Love Burns’ was brought right down to the live garage groove is was dying for all along. But it’s not what we crave for and expect that amazes us tonight, it’s what we’re not waiting for, where they take what we already know. An extended ‘Red Eyes & Tears’ bores a hole through its sullen atmosphere and really lets loose, and a 15 minute version of ‘Salvation’ soars wildly through the song’s potential heights, finally wrapping itself around the ‘Roses ‘I Am The Resurrection’ and the Charlatans’ ‘Sproston Green’, leaving the tattered audience in a sticky stop-start shoe-gazing-psychedelia overloaded climax. Whoa. And tap onto the end of that earlier blazes through criminally unchampioned b-sides ‘Screaming Gun’, ‘Kill the U.S. Government’ and hair-raising set closer ‘Fail-Safe’ with its lacerating overdrive, and you have a set without a fault worth mentioning. There’s little point analyzing much further, they have unveiled the complete picture. Together they don’t have to try because it’s already there. And they don’t just show you, they take you there.
more info:
http://www.blackrebelmotorcycleclub.com
James Berry for Crud Magazine© 2002