Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

In large part, BRMC’s seventh studio album is a tribute to Robert Levon Been’s deceased father, Michael Been (of The Call), who was also BRMC’s mentor and touring sound technician. As such, it features a heartfelt cover of The Call’s 1989 hit “Let the Day Begin,” which does not feel superannuated in the least. On the whole, Specter vacillates between melancholia and catharsis, with the younger Been’s songs reflecting the former and bandmate Peter Hayes’s songs embracing the latter. Among the best are Been’s gorgeous, George Harrison-esque “Lullaby,” and “Sometimes the Light,” which evokes Spiritualized. Meanwhile, Hayes’s balls-out delivery on “Hate the Taste” (a song that riffs like the bastard offspring of “Fuck You Blind” and “Sharp Dressed Man”) and inner Iggy Pop channeling on “Teenage Disease” are fun, but it’s “Some Kind of Ghost” that haunts the Mississippi Delta while simultaneously recalling the back-to-basics blues of BRMC’s best album: Howl.