Concert Review: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Thyroid-Pumping Pageant Show, Tuesday, March 23

What Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is and what it ain't has been a source of clothespin tension since its inception. Its new album Beat the Devil's Tattoo, the band's fifth, reconciles much of that tension by yoking together its effects-laden shoegaze and its blues-based rock -- both leer and sneer -- into something like a seamless document.

Photo: Jason Stoff

Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Last night at the Pageant, the band aired out much of that album over two hours, all the while taking care to churn bowels and to throb heads. But the show itself never really amounted to a statement of purpose. Having a song catalogue so varied in its velocities can be a tricky thing.

Photo: Jason Stoff

Emma Richardson of Band of Skulls.

Band of Skulls opened the show with some cussed rock n' roll. A trio from England, the band might be best known for "Friends," a low-voltage one-off on the mega-selling New Moon soundtrack. Its set last night, however, was mostly slabs of guitar riffs amid boy-girl vocals, an adhesive combo when done right. Songs like "Death by Diamonds and Pearls" and "I Know What I Am" did it right, even when the girl half got a little lax. "Impossible," the most lacerating song from the band's debut album, closed the set in a sphincter-tightening freak-out. By all appearances, at any rate: many in the universally seated crowd suddenly stood to applaud at the end.

See a full slideshow from last night's concert here.

Photo: Jason Stoff

Leah Shapiro of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

There were plenty of sphincter-constricting moments for BRMC, too. Many of those moments came by way of the new album: "Bad Blood," for one, was as thyroid-pumping as anything the band has written. Others were vindicating: songs from Howl, a career-pivoting album sometimes dismissed as pseudo-bluesy-gospel balladry, were some of the most swaggering. Both "Ain't No Easy Way" and "Shuffle Your Feet" exerted a noticeable cabin pressure that (I heard) was also present at the acoustic Vintage Vinyl set earlier in the day.