Product Description

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are Peter Hayes, Robert Levon Been, and Nick Jago. This is the first album for the Echo Label following their departure from Virgin Records. Howl features brand new single "Ain't No Easy Way'" which is more country-rock than some of their previous material yet just as rocking.

Track Listing

1. Shuffle Your Feet
2. Howl
3. Devil's Waitin'
4. Ain't No Easy Way
5. Still Suspicion Holds You Tight
6. Fault Line
7. Promise
8. Weight Of The World
9. Restless Sinner
10. Gospel Song
11. Complicated Situation
12. Sympathetic Noose
13. The Line

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11250 in Music
• Released on: 2005-08-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced

Amazon.co.uk Review
With a name like Howl, you’d expect the third album from San Francisco’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to be their ugliest, heaviest statement yet. Think again. Kicking off with the spontaneous acoustic blues stomp of "Shuffle Your Feet", Howl starts as it means to go on: mellow, stoned, and sounding more authentically down-home than any band of sociopathic, narcosis-twisted punks have sounded since Primal Scream holed up in Memphis to write 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up.

"Still Suspicion Holds You Tight" and "Fault Line" crib from early Dylan, rolling drawled vocals, finger-picked guitar and blasts of harmonica into brittle sneers of malcontent, while the sleepy "Promise" offers up a spaced-out, Spiritualized-style ballad embellished with sweet piano and sleepy brass. Meanwhile, as the titles might suggest, "Restless Sinner" and "Gospel Song" reach back still further into the annals of traditional Americana. What happened to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s rock’n’roll? They haven’t lost it altogether, but on Howl they’ve consciously devolved their sound, and this stripped, mostly enjoyable blues record is testament to the virtue of taking a leaf out of the old rulebook – Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

A change of pace
'Howl' is the exception to the hard-rock rule in BRMC's discography. The raw, distorted guitars of their eponymous debut and Take Them On, On Your Own, are abandoned in favour of a more acoustic style. Songs like Shuffle Your Feet are still lively but are more reminiscent of Johnny Cash than their previous influences. There are also some lovely results when the pace is slowed; the title track and Fault Line are moving alt-country ballads. The album does flag toward the end though, maybe if they had rocked out a couple of times it would have varied the mood.

Underwhelmed
After seeing BRMC on Jonathon Ross one night and then again on VH2 I bought "Take them on on your own". I was absolutley blown away by it. One of the best albums I've bought in the past 5 or 6 years.

Based on this I bought "Howl". Howl indeed, I almost sobbed. Gone have the heavy guitars, shoegazing and almost metal approach. The first couple of tracks seem promising but it just gets so Bluesy and acoustic. Towards the abck end of the album it becomes almost like backgroung music with each track seemingly having no beginning or end and it all just rolls into one.

Given the quality of "Take them on on your own" I'm still gonna buy a couple of the other albums but can't hide my dissapointment at Howl.

Greatest album since The Joshua Tree
I have played this to some people who really know their music and have listened to everything for the last 30 years, and they are a tough crowd to please...they were blown away by it. It just gets better and better every time you hear it. Hopefully one day this will be recognised as the great classic that it surely is.