REVIEW: Black Crowes, Three Snakes And One Charm (American)
- Linda Scott
With their fourth album, The Black Crowes have been given the unenviable task of topping their stunning amorica. Their earliest albums, 1990's Shake Your Money Maker and 1992's The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, were fairly straightforward, good time, Southern-rock albums. 1994's amorica was a darker, harder rocking, more complex album. It won critical praise with the caution of a need for more focus and polish.
Expectations that Three Snakes And One Charm will be amorica's successor won't be met this time around. Three Snakes is more like an album that could have come before amorica. It shows natural growth from the earlier efforts without amorica's power. Fans will see this as a return to the band's roots, Southern-rock, but this time with big dollops of blues, gospel, bluegrass, soul and country.
The Crowes have stayed with another part of their success formula - retrorock and imitation of their influences. Lead vocalist Chris Robinson has toned down the extreme Jagger/Rod Stewart posturing. and the music is less Stones, Aerosmith and more Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers. The sound is brought to you by a band together for eight years. Rich Robinson (brother of Chris) is on rhythm guitar; he and Chris handle all the song writing. The sextet is rounded out by Marc Ford (lead guitar), Steve Gorman (drums), Johnny Colt (bass), and Eddie Hawrysch (keyboards). The band is one of the more controversial ones (vocal pro-drugs, partially banned amorica cover), but this pulls the group together. The only threat seems the ongoing Chris/Rich battle.
Joining The Black Crowes on Three Snakes... are banjo player Rick Taylor, pedal steel guitarist Bruce Kaphan, the Dirty Dozen, vocalist Gary "Mudbone" Cooper and Gary Shider of the P-Funk All Stars, singer Erica Stewart of Ziggy Marley, and singer Barbara Mitchell. The album sounds rich, full with interesting textures brought by all these guest artists.
"Good Friday" is a great choice for the album's first promotional single; it's one of the best tracks on the album, a lovely ballad with a familiar, Stones-like vibe. The first song in the stores will most likely be "Blackberry", a soul track for which the band will shoot a video.
From here it looks like The Black Crowes have another hit. Three Snakes And One Charm may not go beyond amorica musically; it's a different, lighter vibe and can be judged on its own merits. This is a good, consistent album from a good, consistent, performing band. The Crowes always seem like they are about to make the big leap into superband, but Three Snakes isn't likely to be the release because of its reliance on a proven and solid formula instead of a leap into the great unknown. In the meantime, Three Snakes And One Charm is good rock listening.
