There are parts of America where as you drive the roads, you see the cities behind you implode in your rear view mirrors as the expanse of the deserts explodes filling your awareness with the view of nothing but the red mesa. Empires have fallen in these lands, empires of people who knew only the harsh beautiful terrain that flies past your point of reference at 80 miles an hour. Hidden far from the roads we know, in the black and secret caves, ghosts dance to the memories of lives long gone, shadows thrash behind invisible flames.

The music they dance to is the sound of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s fourth album, Beat The Devil’s Tattoo, which is a damn good, damn dark psychedelic rock record. The album cover should give you an indication of what the band is reaching for with this release. It’s an artificially distressed record sleeve with a design aesthetic of an release from the 1960s that has languished in some thrift store bin for the past thirty years. The album cover matches the mood of the album near perfectly and there is the sense that this is a left over artifact.

Beat the Devil’s Tattoo is an hour of angst, pain, despair and loss taking musical cues from Black Sabbath in 1970 than from Jefferson Airplane in 1967, filtered through some rather amazing modern savvy. The album starts off strong with the title track “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” whose opening lines of “You have forsaken / all the love you’ve taken” acts as a great counterpoint to the lyrics of The Beatles “The End”, where we’re told “in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”, as the simple stomp clap percussion drives the song through to the minute and a half mark at which point the fuzzed guitars muscle in making their presence known but never drowning out the extant elements before vanishing again for the second verse as the music progresses to a chanted chorus of “I thread the needle through / You beat the devil’s tattoo” and you know that you’re about to hear something special.

The second song “Conscience Killer” is a straight ahead fuzzed out rocker that loses a bit due to a structure is very similar to the first song, but not detracting much from the song on its own. “Bad Blood”, the next song, is an indication that not all on the album will be storming psyche opuses, as the album slows down to become almost ballad like, sharing with “Sweet Feeling”. “The Toll” and “Long Way Down” a good counterpoint between the other driving songs on the album.

Though there isn’t much weak on the album, I’d like to single out “Mamma Taught Me Better.” This is the best dance song that The Chemical Brothers never recorded. Sounding almost like an organic take on “Let Forever Be” it would make a great dance song if the bass and drum tracks were brought out to the fore a bit more. There are also some great loops waiting to be made from “War Machine” and “Aya” for some enterprising Hip Hop producers.

Ultimately, Beat the Devil’s Tattoo’s strengths outweigh the weaknesses making this one of the better albums I’ve heard this year. It is atmospheric, it is apocalyptic, it is conscious of the past without being in its thrall. If you’re a fan of darker music or are just looking for something to run counter to most of what’s pushed through in the smiling, giddy world of indie rock, this album may prove to be absolutely indispensable to you.

Category : album Review