Feel It Now

Monday night’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club show was a 2 hour set of their multi-genred rock perfection. Blues, gospel, power chords, and fuzz guitar blended from song to song on the 930 Club’s awe-inspiring sound system to an eventually sold-out capacity audience.

This BRMC show sounded aboslutely forensic. You could hear ever nuance of the instrumentation perfectly. From the bass drum kicking so forcefully it made your chest cavity thump to the pick fret-work of the guitars to the harmonica wheezing it all sounded like you were in the recording studio with all the dials cranked to 10.

This set rocked a lot harder than the September show but still fell a little shy of their 2004 performance at Recher’s. Mainly because since they debuted them six months ago the charm has worn off a bit on two or three songs off of BRMC’s latest album Howl. Not that those tracks were bad, but there were moments when they felt like acoustic holding patterns that were delaying the more rocking numbers. That’s not to say all the acoustic work was bad – not by a long shot. When the entire band were working a Howl song over it was damn near magical.

But the highlight of this show was definitely the electric fireworks. The second to last song “Heart & Soul” was simply mind-blowing. As you can find out for yourself by listening to this NPR recording of the entire BRMC show (Thanks to Medusa for finding the link).

After the show we went to DC9 for a few beers only to discover that one of the BRMC guys was cooling off there as well (Or as my friend put it “Your prediction came true Nostradamus”).

Originally published on February 22, 2006.