ROBERT LEVON BEEN, guitarist, bassist and vocalist for garage rockers BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB, talks about the nature of reality and the philosophy of music. JAKEB SMITH knows true happiness.

Most bands promise substance: through a stylised image, a vivacious moral alignment or a sound so excitingly close to the bleeding edge of fashion. How easy it is to be attracted to these bands, to these advertisements of popular culture (or counterculture, still popular, but arbitrarily contrary to some norm or other). It’s unfortunate then, that close analysis often yields very little of the heralded, hyperreal meaningfulness.

Yet condemning the offending parties is as impotent as it is hypocritical. It’s a very human want, to believe in something – a desire so strong that the presumably obvious prerequisite (that being, a tangible concept to believe in) is often overlooked. And so our attention is coveted by demagogic firebrands – wielding smoke without flame – and we consent to their advances with surprising willingness.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are not that band. The Californian three-piece tend towards the ordinary, celebrating the beauty and creativity of common people. Thus Robert Been actively strives to avoid images that provide audiences with a conventional view, with which they could avoid thinking for themselves.

“I’ve been trying all my life to have a generic look,” Been says, his voice is slow and measured, as if every word carries a full weight of meaning. “It’s really hard. It’s really hard to find a t-shirt that doesn’t have a brand or logo on it, or to find some clothes that aren’t a fad or stuck in a time. To be honest that was part of the philosophy for the band – if there was such a conscious thought, it was kind of unspoken – just to be faceless and nameless and to let the music speak for us.”

As is the central clause of writing for an audience, Black Rebel create an environment in which people can think. The grimy garage rock of early albums BRMC and Take Them On, On Your Own was a cry of youthful indignation. Howl was a reflective counterpoint, channelling the irreplaceable heritage of great American blues artists. The band’s latest effort, Baby 81, blends its predecessors with a dose of soul, and holds a mirror to the cracks in the visage of western idealism.

Yet Been is in a constant battle for his own consciousness. For without quiet introspection, and a notebook for his constant stream of thoughts, he finds himself emasculated, “slipping into whatever is right in front of my face: the daily grind, the TV shows, the bullshit, the Internet, just everything. Our entire society is built basically to pull you away from yourself. It’s a lot of fucking noise, and everything at surface level is going to bring you farther away from you own consciousness. Most people love it, because it kills the pain for the day, I guess: it numbs. But for writing it’s the death of thought, of individual thought.”

But instant gratification is a powerful opiate that, however vacuous, provides adequate fulfilment for most people’s tastes. It’s also something the world readily provides, “Especially these days. More and more. It’s a poison, it’s crazy, it’s the person on the cell phone that wants it five minutes ago,” Been says, mildly exasperated. “Good things come to those who wait though.”

But why wait when you can amuse yourself now? Why expend energy maintaining an abstract concept of the future when you can be entertained on demand? Perhaps we are happy seeing what we’re asked to see, believing what we are asked to believe. Our spectrum of perception allows us so few facts concerning reality anyway, is it so wrong to exist on a sea of man-made fiction?

“I really like that thought. I don’t think it’s a dark though as the statement can feel. I think when you know truth and you experience it, you only have to really know it in yourself and experience it a few times in a lifetime, and it’s absent of all words. It’s just knowing, and it’s in a blink of an eye. In one second everything just makes sense and feels right, and you just laugh at yourself for taking all of it seriously, any of it, and you know you’re going to be all right. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, you’re helping the people you’re suppose to help, [and] those people that are in your life are there to help you or to teach you something. I think that’s enough, we only use about two percent of our brain or somethin’ anyway, so there must be a reason we’re takin’ things slow, there must be a reason we’re forced to crawl. I think it [the truth] might be too much. It’s too much for me most of the time.”

By that token then, I muse, we must surely have the potential to grow, to walk, to communicate and coexist with one-and-other... “Potential,” Been ponders, holding the word as if weighing it. “Yeah. The human spirit [has] infinite potential. It’s just ourselves that are keeping us back.

“Music (and I don’t even know if I’m talking about my own music): it’s the last stronghold of being able to relate to each other. Being able to say all of those things that can’t be said, in a song, a melody. There’s an amazing connection in melody and music. There’s something that binds us in that. As far as our instant ‘we want it now,’ fast culture that we live in, it’s killing it, and it’s bringing us further away from that place. That’s why I love being out here and making music, playing shows. I’m probably one of the most disheartened people I know as far just all these things we’re talking about. Most days I just feel like it’s all falling apart, but then I play a show and I see these people connecting with each other, and they’re using us to do that, but it’s really overwhelming. It’s more than my brain can compensate, it’s fucking beautiful, and it reminds me that there is more out there...”

He pauses.

“That’s the moral to the story, I should probably shut up now.”

BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB play The Arena on Thursday January 3. BABY 81 is out now through RCA/SonyBMG.

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