Times are hard. If you don’t believe it, just shake your moneymaker down to your local record store. Some, like Lucinda Williams, are spelling out the trouble for us in protest. Others, like the Black Crowes, are dancing toward doomsday as the sky comes crashing down. “We love to play music because the world is chaos,” frontman Chris Robinson explains. “We can connect to something that isn’t this reality.” On their latest outing, A Pound of Feathers, the Atlanta band that once brought a Southern flair along with the blues to a ‘90s alt-rock scene largely barren of both come back with their first record since Happiness Bastards—a funky collection of songs that remind us to let loose and cherish the good times even during the darkest days.
The heart and soul of the Black Crowes, brothers Chris (vocals) and Rich Robinson (guitars), wasted no time getting back in the studio following not just the success of Happiness Bastards, but their first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination last year. The songs that would come to tip the scales on A Pound of Feathers were all written on the spot in Nashville and recorded in a short burst with returning producer Jay Joyce. That urgency and spontaneity are felt right out of the gate as lead single “Profane Prophecy” opens with arena-ready bluster from Rich and soon descends into all manners of merrymaking a flamboyant Chris can concoct. It’s a devilish declaration, complete with cheeky call-and-response, that playfully lets it be known that rebellion, debauchery, and being oneself are still the order of the day.
Just as the tension between brothers—the riotous, outspoken Chris and the calm, stoic Rich—sparks so much of the Crowes’ magic, A Pound of Feathers finds a natural balance between raucousness and reflection. A rusty strum in the wee hours of the morning tilts us toward the latter on “Pharmacy Chronicles,” while Chris surmises that it’s the “perfume, champagne, and sin” that so often jog our most joyous memories. “Leave it all behind you,” he urges over plinking country piano. “Let the demons find you.” It might be the most revealing line of the record, one that grants us permission to embrace our imperfect selves rather than suppressing our instincts. Are these moments of letting loose the “masterpieces or the rough cuts?” As a beautiful, hazy solo by Rich lifts up Chris’ emphatic promise that “the good times never end,” we might be inclined to go track down a demon or two of our own.
Fellow touring Crowes Cully Symington (drums) and Erik Deutsch (keyboards), as well as backing vocalists Leslie Grant and Mackenzie Adams, thicken the flock to help several of these urgent rockers take flight. Driving drums meet searing riffs on “It’s Like That,” as Chris circumvents the pain that accompanies love by opting for an arrangement with “no strings, no shame.” Grant and Adams take this barnburner to another level, echoing the lead singer’s ricochet phrasing and soaring alongside him on the all-in choruses. Chris sits at the head of the banquet table on the jaunty, almost-medieval “High and Lonesome,” welcoming us to a feast of depraved delights. The backing vocals imbue the proceedings with a mystic quality as Rich, with a solo for any occasion, sounds like a blacksmith bending stubborn metals to his will.
After an album’s worth of songs flaunting devil-may-care abandon—though often with sorrow, bruises, and regrets—the last two tracks of A Pound of Feathers take a much darker tone. “Eros Blues” softly wafts into bluesy eruptions as its protagonist does a brokenhearted strut of shame that shouldn’t phase him. The meandering cut then screechingly loosens an avalanche of sound, full backing vocals on hand to agonize over the one who actually got to him, leaving him for dead with his “heart in [his] hand.” The grim grind of “Doomsday Doggerel” descends a level of Hell deeper as it ushers us to “a front row seat to the end of times.” Though earlier songs promised us some pain in exchange for all these pleasures, the Crowes leave us in a darker place than we could’ve ever imagined.
At the end of the day, it’s still about freedom for the Robinsons—that magic that comes from writing songs together and then bringing them to life on records and later the stage. “Profane Prophecy” urges us to choose between “a pound of feathers or a pound of lead.” A choice between something that can be delicate, graceful, and unpredictable as it floats through the air or something hard and definite like a bullet lodged into flesh. The answer to the old riddle might simply be that life often doesn’t give you a choice. As the Black Crowes remind us, it’s really all about how you choose to shoulder that pound, particularly when the world outside seems too hard to handle. [Silver Arrow]
