Chances are that it’s only when you know a band well that you’re willing to listen to a live offering which, unless you were there, is often inferior to a polished album. In the case of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Live in Paris you won’t be disappointed whether you know them or not.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at their best are purveyors of dirty, reverb-rich, classic rock and roots blues. Fortunately, on this live album, these elements are all here. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Live in Paris offers you a full experience of the band’s back catalogue (excluding 2008’s download-only release The Effects of 333), all in one fine gig that starts with their newest offering Specter At The Feast (2013), which is played in its entirety, and then works its way back to their original roots. For a band like BRMC, this is exactly what you want. This musical smorgasbord of a live album has an almost prog-rock start, kicking off with ‘Firewalker’, which is followed by softer yet anthemic sounds, such as those of ‘Returning’, and then builds to take in the band’s instantly recognisable brand of dirty, distorted, seemingly effortless blue grass rock ‘n’ roll, with the track ‘Sell It’ being especially noteworthy.

Technically, it’s certainly worth pointing out the fact that BRMC are incredibly capable live. This is most obvious on slower tracks because there’s much less on offer by why of distraction. Highlights include ‘Lullaby’, which is chilled and perfectly indie; ‘Some Kind of Ghost’, which is a mixture of gospel, synth and slowness, and ‘Sometimes the Light’ which is a dose of heavenly awesomeness. And just you wait for ‘Mercy’, which has a melancholic, Sixties feel. You didn’t have to be there and, equally, you don’t have to be familiar with the band’s back catalogue to enjoy this. Live in Paris is a rewarding an experience, even if you’re lying on the bed at home. Trust me.

In terms of the album as a whole, the faster, more familiar, anthemic sounds of BRMC dominate the show, but they don’t overpower it. In vocal terms, BRMC are true and authentic live, with any slight differences between the live and recorded experience adding to, rather than diminishing, the aural experience. Peter Hayes (guitar and vocals, sometimes bass, harmonica, synthesiser)’s Donovan-esque voice and Robert Levon-Been (bass, vocals, guitar and sometimes piano’s Bolan-esque vocals merge into one another seamlessly, almost like one person with a split personality.

Instrumentally, the live experience offered by this album might even be considered to be superior to the band’s studio-recorded output. Here, Hayes and Levon-Been go on magical instrumental voyages through cornfields and bright, bright colours, but unlike in some prog-rock, they take you with them. Leah Shapiro (drums and backing vocals since 2008)’s percussion is thick and deep and a great foundation on which all else can build and loop and shine.

The live show’s middle section returns, for the most part, to the album Beat The Devil’s Tattoo (2010). Things kick off with the impossibly catchy, sexy, primal and distinctive title track of the album, which is followed by the country-referencing, grass-chewing, slide-sliding of ‘Ain’t No Easy Way’. This is great fun live. The musical journey winds, slows, picks up and changes pace again with the Brit-pop sounds of ‘Rifles’. Here, the cycle of musical influence comes full circle, as the influence of Oasis on the track draws in other influences from The Beatles and the Mods.

The final part of Live in Paris is absolutely spot on, and is surely the section of the album that listeners will love best. All the best tracks from the band’s self-titled first album, B.R.M.C. (2001), are here — and rightly so. ‘White Palms’ starts the sonic snowball in the typical God/ rock sex/worship sound we love and it’s bloody perfect. But then comes ‘Spread Your Love’ with its homage (surely?) to Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ (1969) and the like. Before the last song, which you only hope and pray will be a crowd pleaser, comes the blue-grass, harmonic-heavy and wondrous, ‘Shuffle Your Feet’. And, finally, it’s the turn of ‘Whatever Happened to my Rock n’ Roll (Punk Song)?’, which is the perfect way to end the show as the track was both the band’s first release, and has proved to be their most popular song.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Live in Paris is great, its amusing, it’s gyration-inducing. It’s time to get your hands on this fantastic release: listen to it, watch it, and spread the love.

Live In Paris is available from amazon & iTunes.

Danish band Mew has been around since 1994. There are grown-up people now that were born after that. Think about that one for a minute, eh? You could say that, looking at album art and titles, the lads have grown more bonkers as time has gone by. Their latest album, the how-the-heck-do-you-pronounce-it? +-, comes a whopping six years after the how-the-heck-are-we-going-to-shorten-this No More Stories ... That one was released by Sony, but this time around they have taken matters into their own hands, self-releasing it, and with Johan Wohlert back in the fold. The essence of the band remains the same, though, having a truly “own” sound comprised of the typical vocals of Jonas Bjerre and the almost orchestral pop-rock of their instruments.

What Mew do so well is play with contrasts and progression. The contrast of bombast versus intimacy, of fast versus slow, of deep sounds versus high pitched ones. But also the contrast in terms of genre sounds and the kind of instruments used, as well as the contrast of complex structures and simple, easy-to-relate to emotions or phrases (“I know, I know, I know, it’s difficult, it’s difficult, different”). All these contrasts are more than expertly put together on their latest. It is a marvel to hear so many sounds coming at you, with so many changes per track, and it all still feeling so smooth and so easy on the ear. The emperor Joseph, in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, says about one of Mozart’s pieces that it has too many notes. Surprisingly, here Mew manage to side step that with ease, funneling all these different sounds and all these change-ups into a cohesive whole.

The album’s opener, ‘Satellites’, for example, starts out with one instrument, followed by Jonas’s high-pitched vocals. Slowly, it builds up, until around the minute mark some bombastic drums come in. At 1:20, these bombastic drums transmorph into a drumbeat, picking up the pace significantly. Before the two minute mark, though, you get the chorus, where the beat is stripped away, Jonas is singing that he wants to be a satellite (for that’s all we see, it’s only satellites, satellites, satellites), after which you get the drumbeat back, a fast moving guitar, and multiple vocal tracks. This is bookended by a chorus again. At this point, mind you, we’re just at the halfway mark, with the second half of the song being decidedly different-yet-fittingly-so than the first half. These complex structures and progressions are evident, with some bombast and theater as well, not only on the track’s opener, but throughout all the songs.

The behemoth of +- is the near-eleven minute ‘Rows’, which starts real tranquil with just a bit of guitar, followed by ballad-like vocal singing that “It’s all right now, anything you can wish for, you can do”. Not that it all is okay yet, as he sings that “We’re going to make it work”, as if after a break-up. In the mean time, multiple instruments have already been added, with at 1:30 the big drums coming in to give it a bit of a punch. Just as easily, though, these drums are taken out of the equation again, going for a sad-sounding piano and guitar combo. Fast forward to the nine minute mark, and you suddenly find yourself in a fast paced flurry of sounds driven by a drumbeat. The best thing about this is, that the journey towards that is so natural, so nicely composed, that it isn’t like what-the-heck?, but that it is a logical progression within the song.

This album, is just another lovely, cohesive output by Mew. All of the songs are surprisingly easy on the ear, despite having so many elements and changes and so few simplistic structures. In terms of composition, it is truly interesting to hear how the songs progress, and how they play the contrasts of soft-loud, fast-slow, deep-high using not just the rock band guitar-bass-drum-vocals set-up, but also backing vocals, horn-like sounds, and even some theatrical bombast on occasion. Six years on, their sound hasn’t been simplified, but it somehow is pretty accessible (despite moving away from a major label). As they have grown older, their sound has not aged, but instead it has grown up. Mew deliver not only yet another good record, but one that one can consider as accomplished to boot.

+- is available from amazon & iTunes.