Black Crowes experiment with fifth offering, By Your Side

Reviewed by SCOTT SWINDELLS
Collegian Staff Writer

With Tuesday's release of By Your Side, there's little doubt the members of The Black Crowes were again hoping for a successful follow-up to their 1990 smash debut Shake Your Money Maker. Unfortunately, By Your Side doesn't cut it.

But the band's fifth major effort in just under a decade shows signs of maturity and a hint of an evolution from its Southern blues and raunchy guitar rock. The Crowes are evolving into a roots rock band that's not afraid to experiment with interesting vocal and horn arrangements and dabble in more extensive improvisation.

The first single, "Kickin' My Heart Around," smacks of the hard-rockin' "Hard to Handle" Chris Robinson vocals that broke the band into the spotlight and sold over 3 million copies of the debut. With catchy guitar and haughty Rolling Stones-style vocals, "Kickin' My Heart Around" could kick its way into the Billboard charts.

In fact, Rolling Stone magazine writer Lorraine Ali compared the song to the Aerosmith classic "Draw the Line," while songs like "Welcome to the Goodtimes" show the influence of Aerosmith's smash Armageddon ballad, "Don't Want to Miss a Thing." The similarities are not surprising -- the album was produced by long-time Aerosmith collaborator Kevin Shirley.

"Welcome to the Goodtimes" starts off with slow, bluesy guitar licks reminiscent of the band's "Talks to Angels" but promptly detours into weird territory. The tempo picks up, becoming an even-paced march, and the chorus really starts to swing with the addition of horns. By the middle of the song, the band is singing Beatles-like "na na nas" before the song comes full circle and returns to the solitary blues guitar. It's well worth the trip, but the song's eerie feeling will probably prevent it from catching on.

The same goes for the album-- the Crowes took great strides in changing its style with regard to instrumentation, guitar improvisation and creativity, but the album won't produce a hit single of the magnitude of the Crowes' cover of Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle."

Touring with Blues Traveler and headlining the Furthur festival last the summer gave the Crowes a good sense of how to jam out. The experience of playing with improv-heavy bands has paid off -- the album treats listeners to some wonderful, jammy Southern rock organ and piano playing by keyboardist Eddie Hersch, along with some slide guitar solos and other whole-band digressions from chord-based rock. Guitarist Rich Robinson plays brilliantly in some places, like the funky riff and solos in the old-school rockabilly number "Heavy," but he gets lazy in others, overdoing "HorseHead" with weird slide guitar, too much wah-wah pedal and crunchy distortion.

"Horsehead" is an altogether forgettable track, featuring numerous rock clichés like the background gospel singers and generic-sounding rock chord progression.

Even so, with this album, the Crowes are moving in a new direction -- a definite positive for a band in the wake of three lackluster albums. Sometimes it takes time for a new style to yield success for a band and take hold of its fans.

By Your Side is worth a listen for its new instrumentation and harder edge, but don't expect much more from the album than what's heard in its first single. At least not yet.