Baby 81 is an ambitious, powerful, guitar-driven rock’n’roll record that’s guaranteed to get people jumping and thinking. Sonically it’s a far cry from 2005’s rootsy, acoustic Howl, Baby 81 was born only minutes after the final track on Howl was completed, when Peter Hayes (guitars/vocals) and Robert Levon Been (bass/vocals/keys) were rejoined in the studio by drummer Nick jago after a brief break up earlier that year.
“I was almost in tears the whole time, it was very emotional,” Jago recalls. “That was the most memorable recording session I’ve had.” Been felt the same way: After laying down the inspired, hard-charging “Took Out a Loan” and “666 Conducer,” “I held onto those two songs for the next year, daydreaming about what would happen if we finished that” Been says.
Baby 81 is a driving rock’n’roll record that still maintains Howl’s folky core. “I see it kind of as the sister of Howl,” Hayes says. Lyrically, the group lasers in on a theme they’ve explored before: “Personal revolt. It’s gotta start somewhere, and if it ain’t on a personal level, it’s too easy to beat the crap out of governments with words,” Hayes explains. “Start with yourself and hopefully you get enough people doing it on their own and we can all come together.”
There’s plenty on Baby 81 to get inspired by: the chunky riff that launches opener “Took Out a Loan”; the massive, Led Zeppelin-style beat propelling “666 Conducer”; the woozy, piano-led “Window,” or the gorgeous symphonic drone of “All You Do Is Talk”. But most surprisingly is how the album somehow ties in all 3 of their previous efforts, while still managing to take a leap forward.
Anthemic first single “Weapon of Choice,” a powerful collaboration between the two songwriters, Hayes compared its sound to that album’s “Love Burns.” “I like the idea of hiding a lot of acoustic guitars behind the electrics,” Hayes says. “I’ve got this guitar my dad gave me, and I always try to put it on songs, behind the electrics, just to keep his spirit in there.” Family is quite important to the band, Been’s father, worked as a sound engineer on Baby 81, and has even handled live sound for the band When BRMC talk about Baby 81, they say a lot about timing: knowing when to stop working on songs, finding those slivers of time captured in sound checks to sculpt into the next album. And although it ends with a track Hayes wrote in his late teens, “The sequence of this record is almost perfectly chronological from the first song we recorded for the album to the last,” Been points out. “I know a lot of bands don’t do that, but I think it makes the album feel more alive, it’s like a living, breathing organism.”
Ultimately, Baby 81 captures Black Rebel Motorcyle Club at the most crucial time of their career. “I think we all took a leap of faith a little bit more on this album, writing more current songs,” Been reveals. “We used to hold on pretty tight to new songs, but it kind of feels like people are finally going to hear where we’re at right now — we’re much more in the moment.”
From the BRMC Myspace site.
