Pop CD

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Take Them on Your Own

3 out of 5 3
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

The answer to the plaintive question posed in this Anglo-American trio's 2001 single Whatever Happened to My Rock'n'Roll? (Punk Rock Song) is: Johnny Rotten moved to Malibu, the 1980s happened and "rock'n'roll" became a niche product, periodically rediscovered by bands convinced that only they possess the right proportion of attitude and haircuts to set the world to rights.

Every train-wreck guitar chord of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's second album aches with yearning for the days when the Sex Pistols were signed to EMI and a leather jacket did for every occasion. Their no-surrender stance is admirable, but Black Rebel haven't a hope of leading the people's revolution because they are so self-consciously reverential, with each narcotic outburst owing its existence to the Pistols and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Still, there's something to be said for a band who sing "I kill you all with a six-barrel shotgun" as if they not only mean it but already have the victims lined up against the wall. We're All in Love employs, with breathtaking blatantness, the riff from the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar. And there is further evidence of two fingers stuck up in the direction of the establishment on the convulsive US Government.

At the very least, the album has good intentions.

Today's best video

Latest reviews

Today in pictures