Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

On their turn of the century debut album, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club really did feel like rebels, deftly making the case for loud, psychedelic rock ’n’ roll at a time when it had fallen out of favor. The prominent garage-rock revival of the early 2000s vindicated the San Francisco group, but it also left them without much of an obvious mission statement, putting these one-time insurgents for the first time on defense instead of offense. The band threw a curveball with 2005’s Howl, branching out to explore acoustic blues and folk, but subsequent albums have been less radical, with bluesy undertones mostly drowned out by the trio’s traditionalist, electric rock.