Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009
The Black Crowes
The Black Crowes {recordings_bands_mg} The Black Crowes {/recordings_bands_mg}
, The Black Crowes
0
There's a new album out by the Black Crowes. Two, actually. The
first—the official new album—is titled Before the
Frost ..., while the second—a bonus digital giveaway when you
buy the first—is ... Until the Freeze, and both were recorded live
in front of an audience.Truth be told, neither of the new discs is bad. In fact, the two albums are quite likely the best thing the band has turned out on record in more than a decade, and it's miles above the last record, the band's first with new guitarist Luther Dickinson, son of late soulman Jim Dickinson. This time out, the group manages to coalesce into a more than solid unit, helped along by a decent-enough helping of songs that go somewhere rather than wandering aimlessly through some jammed-out sonic wasteland.
But, while there are enough keepers to make it worth wading through the two albums at least once or twice, and while the players in the group are sounding more like a whole than they have in the past couple of years, the new music ultimately suffers from being scattered over too many minutes, with too much filler in between.
Lack of focus is a problem that 1994's Amorica doesn't have, though. An album borne of success—the band was still riding on the wave created by the classic-rock stylings of its debut and the ragged, cutting rock 'n' roll of its sophomore album—and frustration—the band had spent time in the studio previous to the sessions that spawned Amorica, only to abandon those recordings until they were released many years later as Tall—Amorica is a wide-ranging set of songs that somehow manages to connect, seeming very much like every piece is just one brick in a wall of sound.
It's a record that swells up rather than kicking the door down, though it doesn't exactly build slowly and quietly. No, the opening percussion on "Gone" grabs hold of the listener and looks them straight in the eyes, swaying back and forth hypnotically as one guitar muscles in with a chunky, rhythmic riff, another lays down something funkier but borne of the same soul. Before you know it, there's a lead snaking its way through the groove, hard to catch as it wiggles through the song.
It's a tough opening to an album that depicts the wear and tear the band had been through in the few years since it broke big, though the Crowes were just as willing to let the guard down—even if distrust remained, lurking in the lyrical background—easing up on songs like "Cursed Diamond," "Nonfiction" and "Descending."
In fact, the quieter tunes outnumber the rockers on Amorica, even if they do tend to rise up loudly into musical thunderstorms. Lyrically, though, singer Chris Robinson perhaps sums the band's evolution up best in the chorus of the rolling "Wiser Time," where he sings, " On a good day, its not every day / We can part the sea / And on a bad day, its not every day / Glory beyond our reach." It was this willingness to reach far—and occasionally fail—that imbued Amorica with an energy that simply could not be sustained.
While classic-rock radio has ensured that the band will be forever linked with the hits from its first album—"She Talks to Angels," "Jealous Again," etc.—there is something infinitely more interesting about the painful chaos that Amorica emerged from. Unfortunately, after a couple more years the band would implode and never fully recover. V
The Black Crowes
Amorica
(American)
Originally released: 1994
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