Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

For “Baby 81,” the San Francisco trio Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC) returns to its rock and roll roots, delivering a fourth album that, while often unoriginal, remains thoroughly enjoyable. During the absence of British drummer Nick Jago, BRMC recorded “Howl,” an album of folky acoustic songs. But now that Jago has overcome his substance abuse issues, BRMC are back in their comfort zone.

“Baby 81” opens with “Took Out a Loan,” a typical classic rock song that could have been written anytime within the past few decades. The style and the lyrics (“I took out a loan on my empty heart, babe”) are, in the strictest sense of the word, original; nonetheless, they sound exhausted, and this generic feeling seeps into the whole album.

Guitarist Peter Hayes and bassist Robert Levon Been trade lead vocals back and forth, but it’s difficult to notice the switch. Both have the exact amount of raspiness and vowel-slurring expected of a rock singer; instead of being an asset, this just compounds their lack of character. Their songs tend to repeat the same nondescript lyrics as many times as possible, like “Somebody / Somebody / Somebody’s gonna hurt somebody” on “Berlin.”

Listening to “Baby 81” becomes a search for something different, and the band does oblige with some interesting moments as the album moves on. The acoustic guitar introduction to “Weapon of Choice,” the first single, is energetic. The song proceeds to bend back into typical BRMC, but it does make effective use of stereo sound, sending noise at the listener from different channels.

“Window” introduces a piano and drums combination which sounds like an edgier version of The Fray, with BRMC’s Brit-rock guitar and vocals sitting on top. Overall, Jago’s drumming is standard 4/4 rock fare, but he manages to keep it interesting here and there.

“Not What You Wanted” also diverges slightly from the heavy rock trend with an Oasis-like barrage of E chords complemented by gleefully distorted solos. The rest of “Baby 81” tends to run together, and though the band mixes things up slightly with dramatic synth organs (“All You Do Is Talk”), more screaming guitar (“Killing the Light”), and a very extended instrumental jam (the 9-minute “American X”), the songs still melt into one general attitude of “Yep, this is rock and roll.”

The final track, “Am I Only” is the only song in which originality extends past the introduction. A guitar progression that sounds like Dashboard Confessional in slow motion supports Haves’s and Been’s voices, which taper off into a closing falsetto over what sounds like a toy xylophone.

BRMC is a good, wholesome rock band, but they can’t help being reminiscent of many more distinctive bands. They’re average, in the sense that “Baby 81” sounds like a mathematical mean of every rock album from the past couple decades. That’s not to say that they produce terrible music; there’s a lot of decent rock and roll out there, and accordingly BRMC’s latest album is pretty good for a band so lacking in originality.