Wrong Creatures, recorded in LA with producer Nick Launay, is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s eighth album overall and first since 2013’s Specter at the Feast. Despite that gap between releases, Wrong Creatures feels like a logical continuation of BRMC’s signature garage-rock, with each track embracing the raucous, swaggering sensibility of previous sets. It’s the sort of effortless rock-and-roll that has rarely existed on the radio—or the Spotify charts—in recent years, and the entire album is a solid reminder of why we need bands like this to prevail. From the melancholy introspection of “Haunt” to the rollicking grit of “Little Thing Gone Wild,” Wrong Creatures feels like it harkens back to some bygone era, hauling the listener straight into an Americana dive bar where spilled beer coats the floor. The songs deal with mortality, according to frontman Peter Hayes, although that sentiment is only vaguely apparent to the listener,which gives the songs a sense of being open to interpretation. Still, songs like “Echo,” with its moody, acoustic-laced aesthetic, and “Calling Them All Away,” an echoing noise-rock number, offer hints at the musicians’ intended tone. Shadows lace through the album, particularly on the aforementioned songs, but there is a wry hopefulness that pervades as well. On “Spook,” the album’s first real track—Hayes and his bandmates bring the song’s driving, impassioned energy to the forefront, an invigorated emotional release felt both by the musicians and the listener.