Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Water Street Music Hall, 204 N Water St.

Thursday, September 20

6:30 p.m. | $13-$15 |325-5600, waterstreetmusic.com

"‘Aw, man. What are we gonna do?,'" says Black Rebel Motorcycle Club guitarist Peter Hayes, recalling his reaction when drummer and band co-founder Nick Jago quit the group three years ago.

Formed in San Francisco in 1998, BRMC had always functioned more like a family business than a typical rock band. Hayes and bassist Robert Been, friends since high school, have a relationship that, according to Been, is "like brothers as much as it gets." Hayes says his bond with the Been family runs so deep that they even took him in during periods of estrangement from his own family. Meanwhile, Been's father, producer Michael Been - best known as the leader of critically acclaimed ‘80s band the Call - has produced the band's last three records. Apparently, being so closely knit made it difficult for Hayes and Been to make a personnel change that other bands might find routine.

"I had been in maybe one or two bands before this," says Hayes, "and one of them was with Rob Rob had been in kind of a little thing and the other band with me. Nick had never been in any other band. So we all started out together, for the most part. That experience of learning together, there's no way you can replace that. I think it's impossible. I can tell when he's having a bad day and I don't even have to be looking at him when I'm playing."

Apparently Jago felt the same way, as it didn't take him long to change his mind. After he left in 2004, Hayes and Been carried on without him and recorded "Howl," a stripped-down, mostly acoustic excursion into blues, Americana, roots, and gospel. Spacious arrangements, which were facilitated by Jago's absence, threw a curve ball to listeners familiar with BRMC's electrified sound. But Jago returned by the time the album came out in 2005. Inspired by its creative detours on "Howl," BRMC was newly rejuvenated and primed to rock out again after time apart. In fact, Jago claims to have spent the entire recording session for the follow-up on the verge of tears. Perhaps he realized how close he'd come to derailing the band before it reached its full potential.

Released earlier this year, the resulting work, "Baby 81," kicks, stomps, and churns like the work of a band brimming with purpose and resolve. The album captures BRMC simultaneously hitting its creative stride, returning to amplified form, and expanding its boundaries in new ways. And it's easy to imagine the album propelling the band's popularity to new heights, thanks to its plentiful hooks, production depth, intricate arrangements, and variety - all of which the band pulls off with fluid ease.

While undeniably original from the start, BRMC's darkly tinged mix of garage, psychedelic, and alternative strains of rock on its two pre-"Howl" albums - "B.R.M.C." and "Take Them On, On Your Own" - sounded under-developed, even stilted, next to the band's carefully tailored image. Album covers and posters invariably depict the bandmembers - all in leather jackets, all with eye-popping black hair meticulously coiffed and teased and standing at attention - hovering like phantoms in doorways. Sure, the image successfully conveyed a sense of mystique and intrigue, but, if you didn't know better, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell whether you were looking at a rock band or a fashion magazine. But on "Baby 81" (the title refers to an unidentified Sri Lankan infant claimed by nine different mothers following the 2004 tsunami), the band finally brings the hat and the cattle.

Some of the songs define trends, transcend them, and then shatter them. On opening number "Took Out a Loan," for example, the band transports the listener to the Mississippi Delta and channels the muscular riff swagger of musical carpetbagger Jimmy Page. It's a well-worn stylistic path, but listeners can point to this song, get one last fix, and say "enough already - time to move on." Which is exactly what BRMC does, leaving the purists in the dust, rather than pander to them as some of their peers might.

"We learned a lot about production on ‘Howl,'" Hayes says with a laugh. "We still don't know quite what it means, but we learned how to have fun with the production."

Interestingly, despite the album's epic, episodic sweep, the band didn't sweat the song order and simply sequenced the songs in chronological order of when they recorded them.

"It just kind of worked out that way," explains Hayes. "It made it a little easier. You can go on forever with that."

Nonetheless, cohesion remained a priority.

"We've always been concerned with keeping people interested through a whole album, and not just about putting the singles up front so the club owner would listen to it," Hayes says. "It's funny - you learn not to do that right off the bat. We'd take our demos to club owners and I'd call ‘em on the phone and say ‘Hey, did you listen to our CD yet?' They'd say ‘Oh, I'm listening to it right now.' I'd hear one song in the background and then... SKIP... SKIP... We try to keep people from skipping somehow."

"But," he adds, "I skip too."