Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in SA

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in SA

Friday, 25 November 2011 13:33

Peter Hayes lights a cigarette and fiddles it quietly between his index and middle finger. He looks past his sunglasses and past the smoke, gazing emptily at the sunny patio of the hotel’s pool-deck.

"I think it’s important, you know" the guitarist and singer breathes out. "To have a point in life, beyond yourself, beyond your own survival."

The members of the trio seem to float with a collective disassociation, searching for themselves amid the levels of emotional soundscapes. Their introspective sound is as nostalgic as it is effortless, born from desire to forget about loss and delve into the chaos of their unconscious.

The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club band spent six months in a small Philadelphia apartment creating their last album, Beat the Devil's Tattoo, growing accustomed to reading each other’s body language and developing their intuition; their connection is apparent in the fluidity of each track.

The members did admit to being quite reserved in public, "It takes a lot of attitude," bassist Robert Levon Been laughs, commenting on the band’s unexpected success "It’s like being a bird and having to fluff up your feathers to appear bigger than you are, but at the end of the day… you’re just playing chicken."