The Black Crowes: A Pound of Feathers review – pathos and profanity elevate rock ‘n’ roll like no other | music

TTime is not linear for Chris and Rich Robinson. When their group The Black Crowes debuted in the late 1980s, the music was deep in one of its magical transitional eras, where technological advances had ushered in an unexpected future where techno, hip-hop and acid house left rock ‘n’ roll sounding like an old score. The Robinsons clearly didn’t get that memo, arriving in a glow of paisley and patchouli with an Otis Redding-inspired cover that dragged their Stax mainstay from the ’60s into the early ’70s, correcting them in bell-bottom denim and a Sticky Fingers strut.

Nearly 40 years later, not much has changed inside the Crowes’ hermetically sealed warming box. There have been disastrous splits, amicable break-ups and drastic lineup changes, to the point where the brothers are the only remaining founders of Cruise. However, they remain proud exiles from Main Street and the 21st century. It makes their tenth album an irresistible treat. In these bleakest moments, with war and genocide and lunatics at the wheel all over the world, who can blame anyone for escaping into the simpler world conjured up here, ruled by Kev-worthy riffs, infallible sliding grooves and the kind of rock ‘n’ roll adventures always freshened up in Cruise’s hands?

A Pound of Feathers continues the ascension that began with 2024’s Happiness Bastards, which revived his process after a decade or so on ice and won the Robinsons Award for his best reviews this century. But while they’re returning to the winning formula here — the same producer and same Nashville recording studio as its predecessor — there’s nothing concrete or phoned-in about it. That’s why it’s hard to begrudge the Crowes their fascination with ancient sounds and styles: no other band since then has played with such authority, such joy, such complete commitment to the part. They have long since outgrown pastiche becomes The thing they worshiped, a great trick if you could pull it off.

This does not mean that a certain suspension of disbelief is not necessary. You have to buy into the mystery of the Crowes and the myths surrounding rock musicians and their lifestyles. These songs have a lot to do with the realities of life in a touring rock band of a certain kind: drug use, fleeting love affairs, and the strange emptiness that often follows debauchery. While records like “Wilco Was There” interrogated this topic from a more sophisticated point of view, the Crowes simply invite us to thrill at their exploits, and feel sympathy come the next morning.

The Crowes’ music does an eerie job of selling stories of rowdy rock ‘n’ roll, an imperfect storm of stoner damage (it’s like that) and quintessential Zeppelin music (Cruel Streak, Doomsday Doggerel’s closer Cashmere). There is so much poetry, charisma and wit in Robinson’s words. “I slept all night in a hollow log,” boasts the cowbell-driven opener of “Profane Prophecy,” adding that “my lineage in debauchery is my merit to fame.” Do you call this a good time? Meanwhile, Chris pulls out: “OhI can’t remember what happened in that bathroom stall. Gentlemen never say never; Crooks and vagabonds can’t seem to remember.

Then there is compassion. Their smug heroes slide across their stages and behind the scenes, seemingly immune to the consequences of their actions, until they’re not. Pharmacy Chronicles is a sad little ’70s rock epic that illustrates the Crowes’ facility with both a rock ‘n’ roll fantasy and the uncomfortable truths behind that fantasy, which reveal themselves when the attraction suddenly and uncomfortably kicks in. At first, Robinson enjoys “perfume, champagne, and sin.” But somewhere along the way, delusion gives way to disillusionment, and he contemplates “the other side of the filler/prescription painkiller.” The phrase – “The good times never end” – is highlighted by spectral slide guitar, and filled with melancholy.

It’s these wonderful moments that balance out the cheap thrills elsewhere, and make A Pound of Feathers a rich and rewarding experience. Across these 11 tracks, the Crowes have it both ways: basking in their invincible rock ‘n’ roll armor before baring their glass hearts. That everything works well and never looks outdated or outdated is evidence of some intangible alchemy.

Age cannot wither the Crow family. Someone tells an eccentric tech entrepreneur who’s wasting his billions on resetting his biological clock that a group of perverts have found the secret to eternal youth, and it has nothing to do with weird health regimens and everything to do with, as Spinal Tap’s Viv Savage says, “having a good time, all the time.”

Alexis Petridis is away

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