The Black Crowes: A Pound of Feathers Review – Pathos and Profanity Elevate Peerless Rock'n'Roll Pastiche
With Keef-style riffs and full-blooded commitment to the bit, resurgent brothers Chris and Rich Robinson resurrect the rocker lifestyle of eras past in their latest album A Pound of Feathers. Time is not linear for the Robinson brothers. When their group the Black Crowes first surfaced in the late 1980s, music was deep into one of its magical transitional eras.
Hermetically Sealed Hotbox of Rock
Technological advances were sling-shotting pop into unexpected futures as techno, hip-hop and acid house left rock'n'roll looking like a period piece. The Robinsons clearly hadn't received the memo, arriving in a blaze of paisley and patchouli with an inspired Otis Redding cover that dragged its 1960s Stax strut all the way into the early 1970s, redressing it in bell-bottomed denim and Sticky Fingers swagger.
Almost 40 years later, little has changed within the Crowes' hermetically sealed hotbox. There have been calamitous splits, amicable hiatuses and radical lineup rejigs, to the point where the brothers are the only founding Crowes left. Yet they remain proud exiles from Main Street, and from the 21st century.
Irresistible Pleasure in Grim Times
It makes their 10th album an irresistible pleasure. In this grimmest of moments, with war and genocide and maniacs at the wheel across the globe, who could blame anyone for escaping into the simpler world conjured here, governed by Keef-worthy riffs, infallible slip-slide grooves and the kind of rock'n'roll misadventure that's always been rejuvenated in the Crowes' hands?
A Pound of Feathers continues the upswing that began with 2024's Happiness Bastards, which reanimated their operation after a decade or so on ice and won the Robinsons their best reviews this century. But while they're returning to a winning formula here – same producer and same Nashville recording studio as its predecessor – there's nothing formulaic or phoned-in about it.
Transcending Pastiche with Authority
That's why it's hard to begrudge the Crowes their fascination with vintage sounds and styles: no other band since has played the past with such authority, such joy, such full-blooded commitment to the bit. They long ago transcended pastiche to become the thing they worshipped, a neat trick if you can pull it off.
That doesn't mean a certain suspension of disbelief isn't necessary. You have to buy into the Crowes' mystique, into the mythos surrounding rock'n'rollers and their lifestyles. These songs very much concern the realities of life in a touring rock band of a certain vintage:
- Substance abuse
- Transient love affairs
- That peculiar emptiness that often follows debauchery
And while records such as Wilco's Being There have interrogated this subject matter from a more evolved viewpoint, the Crowes invite us simply to thrill to their exploits, and to feel empathy for the following morning's comedown.
Perfect-Imperfect Storm of Rock Influences
The Crowes' music does a fearsome job of selling their ornery rock'n'roll stories, a perfect-imperfect storm of Stones damage (It's Like That) and note-perfect Zeppelin-isms (Cruel Streak, and the exquisitely doomy, Kashmir-esque closer Doomsday Doggerel). And there's plenty of poetry, charisma and wit within the Robinsons' lyrics.
"I slept all night in a hollow log," boasts cowbell-driven opener Profane Prophecy, adding that "my pedigree in debauchery is my claim to fame." On You Call This a Good Time?, meanwhile, Chris drawls: "Ooh, I can't remember what went on in that bathroom stall." Gentlemen never tell; rogues and vagabonds, it seems, simply can't recall.
Pathos and Profanity in Balance
Then there's the pathos. Their swashbuckling antiheroes glide across their stages and backstages, seemingly immune to consequences of their actions, until they aren't. Pharmacy Chronicles is a 1970s sad-rock mini-epic illustrating the Crowes' facility with both the fantasy of rock'n'roll and the uncomfortable realities behind that fantasy, which reveal themselves when gravity suddenly and inconveniently kicks in.
Early doors, Robinson is revelling in "perfume, champagne and sin." But somewhere along the way, illusion gives way to disillusionment, and he's ruminating on "side two filler / Prescription painkiller." The refrain – "the good times never end" – gets accented by spectral slide guitar, and suffused with melancholy.
Rich, Rewarding Experience
It's these masterful moments that balance out the cheaper thrills elsewhere, and make A Pound of Feathers such a rich, rewarding experience. Across these 11 tracks, the Crowes have it both ways: regaling in rock'n'roll's shielding invincibility before revealing their own hearts of glass. That it all works so well and never feels archaic or old hat is testament to some intangible alchemy.
Age cannot wither the Crowes. Someone tell that tech entrepreneur weirdo squandering his billions on rewinding his biological clock that a bunch of reprobates have stumbled on the secret of eternal youth, and it has nothing to do with wackadoodle health regimens and, seemingly, everything to do with – as Spinal Tap's Viv Savage says – "having a good time, all the time."
