14. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Baby 81
Full disclosure: I love this band. BRMC is one of those groups I just root for. Everyone has at least one of these bands. Here's an easy way to tell: If instead of "That album is shite," you find yourself saying, "I really need to revisit that record," then that's your band. I don't care who BRMC rip off, how pretentious they are, none of it. All I know is that they're unassailably cool. And cool goes a hell of a long way in rock and roll. The first exposure I had to BRMC (also cool, by the way: band names that can be abbreviated or shortened -- "Black Rebel" works too) was seeing them open for the Waterboys in Boston in 2001. Nobody had any earthly idea who these kids were, including us, and we were actually a bit salty that there was an opening act at all. When they hit the stage, though, we were hooked from minute one. Fuzzy, sexy, smoky, with songs that weren't so much songs as groove machines with no "off" switch -- in a word, cool. The first record, B.R.M.C., came out about a month later, and all of a sudden I had this new band to be excited about and share with less fortunate souls. Don't lie. You love that feeling.
After Take Them On, On Your Own (I really need to revisit that one) and Howl (an interesting blues-and-gospel-soaked, mainly acoustic change of pace) comes Baby 81, a glorious return to form. And as much as I despise "return to form" as a description of any album -- it's art, people, and art evolves -- I just wanted BRMC to rock me again. Well, Baby brings the rock. And the evolving as well. The grooves sometimes stray over into U2 territory ("Not What You Wanted," "All You Do Is Talk"), and they toss in a piano ballad ("Windows") for good measure. Hell, they even pull off a 9 1/2 minute song ("American X"), wherein the groove is broken into two pieces by (gasp!) some bitchin' soloing. I mean, it's fuzzy, slow soloing, but still.
Did I mention that I love this band?
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