BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE

CLUB Devil Music

For a leather and denim-clad band renowned for broody and rather masculine garage blues, replacing your long time drummer with a pretty Danish brunette is not be the most obvious choice. But, as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club bass player Robert Levon Been told DAVID CRADDOCK ahead of the band’s show at Metro Freo on Tuesday, August 3, their new member saved a band on its knees.  
Emerging alongside The Strokes and The White Stripes in the garage rock purple patch of 2001, San Francisco’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have maintained their reputation for making menacing records that meld the swampy drama of southern blues with the buzz-saw intensity of classic rock‘n’roll. 
The trio’s last WA performance was at Southbound in 2008, where with their former (and notoriously volatile) drummer Nick Jago, they stepped on stage into the sweltering heat dressed fully in black, and preceded to perform a memorable set full of harmonica-puffing, bile and bravado.
This week BRMC return to Perth with their new album Beat The Devil’s Tattoo and with a new drummer in the form of Raveonettes skins-woman Leah Shapiro. Melding the country, blues and gospel elements of their critically acclaimed (and largely acoustic) 2005 album Howl with the garage-y scuzz of their 2001 debut, Beat The Devil’s tattoo is the sound of a band that has re-found its mojo after a tumultuous few years.
“It’s pretty simple – she saved our ass when there wasn’t much of a band left,” bass player Robert Levon Been says of Shapiro, who took over from Jago after infighting, and the drummer’s desire to make his own music, led him to indefinitely leave the group. “[There wasn’t] a lot of spirit left to keep going. Now we’re back to where we hope to be… The floor dropped out from under us; it was devastating. He was like a brother, he still is like a brother, but the amount of fighting and the amount of problems we had was starting to take away more from the music than it was giving it. Once that balance shifts you’ve got to do something about it.    
“Most of the time it was really basic shit,” Been explains of the band’s bickering with Jago. “Showing up to sound check on time or showing up to the bus before it leaves, or showing up to an actual show believe it or not. Just generally being involved.”
Since releasing Howl, BRMC have released a live album, an instrumental concept album, and the 2007 full-length Baby 81 which was met with mixed reactions. While Baby 81 had glimpses of the band’s former glory, it didn’t have the immediate appeal or consistency of their earlier work.
However, if the menacing fuzz of new tracks Conscience Killer or War Machine are anything to go by, Shapiro has given BRMC a shot in the arm. Or, as Been puts it: “There’s something about Leah that somehow just sits for god knows what reason.”
To record Beat The Devil’s Tattoo, the now LA based band returned to the same Philadelphia house in which they created Howl. With support offered by the house’s owners, who are long time friends of the band, the band began recording in a basement studio deep into the night.
“They seem to take us in when no one else will,” Been explains of the owners of the house who are also musicians. “The Howl record was a very similar circumstance – we didn’t have a label and Nick wasn’t really wanting to be involved, so we made Howl without Nick as well. Me and Peter played the drums on that record – not everyone knows that.”
Although they may be intern-ationally recognised artists who have appeared on the covers of iconic music magazines and on the world’s great stages, the financial security of staying at a friend’s house also allowed BRMC to focus again on their art and creativity.
“A lot of it has to do with being broke, and having a place to fucking live,” Been laughs when asked why the band decided to return to Philadelphia. “They offered us a bed, and a bed goes a long way. They’re also very good hearted people. There’s just some people in your life – you know that there’s somewhere you return to when everything falls apart. They’re those people for us.”
As well as being financially comfortable, Been says Beat The Devil’s Tattoo saw the band developing greater confidence and comfort with the way they sequenced and compiled their work. At times, the record can swiftly shift from foot-to-the-floor rockers to delicate, solemn acoustic numbers, and it is this dynamic, that Been says is most rewarding to replicate on stage.
“It’s chaotic ‘wall of sound’ madness with one song and then it turns into the slowest most intimate gentle song – you could hear a pin drop,” he explains. “The transitions are drastic and it’s really a challenge for us to go, emotionally, from the highest peak to the lowest valley. Right now, it’s a thing that’s most inspiring about this tour. Seeing how far we can go with that.”