B.R.M.C.

With the hunt for the next big thing at its most intense at this time of year, the hype machine can throw up a set of expectations that all but the most gifted can only fail to live up to.

San Francisco’s BRMC are the latest to feel the steely kiss of this particular double edged sword and look set to both profit and suffer.

They are, as would seem to be the unavoidable fashion of the day, massively retro. While the references to underground US culture are no shock (they have, after all, taken their name from Easy Rider), more surprising are their obvious roots in the British indie scene of the early ’90s. Thus the strains of the Stooges and the MC5 mix rather uneasily with the Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride and pre-Ecstacy Primal Scream.

For a few thrilling moments it looks as though they might pull it off and justify all those column inches, especially with the dark, pounding opening trio of ‘Love Burns’, ‘Red Eyes And Tears’ and ‘Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘n’ Roll’.

Come its middle section, however, and B.R.M.C. begins to flounder widely, cast adrift in a sea of overused effects pedals and second hand riffs. ‘Awake’ and ‘Too Real’ may strive for the scuzzed up majesty of Spacemen 3 but achieve merely the sound of a Slowdive tribute band.

That they rescue matters so radically in the album’s final third is therefore all the more incredible. ‘Spread Your Love’ is a massive, truly exhilarating twelve bar blues boogie, replete with howling harmonica and dirty bass, while closing track ‘Salvation’ is a tense, psychedelic, gospel tinged number.

That it could easily be taken from the latest Spiritualized album is of little matter, for by now we know that BRMC have come to save rock ‘n’ roll, not with the white hot sound of the future but the warmed up leftovers of yesteryear.