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Lions
05/03/2001 5:19 PM, Yahoo! Music
Ken Micallef
Like an old rabid dog who refuses to learn new tricks but can still be good fun when not salivating, the Black Crowes do one style, and to the hilt. Following 1996's roundly ignored Three Snakes & One Charm, '94's Amorica and their breakthrough Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, Lions sounds refreshed and adventurous. Or maybe the Black Crowes are so left of commercial-center that their rolling blues rock thunder still sounds unique five years after their last failure. But where the Robinson boys once seemed perpetually stuck in the butt-skankin', Faces-meets-Sticky Fingers pit, Lions draws more on communal southern boogie rock--slightly less on doofus monster guitar riffs. Not that Lions signals any reinvention, the Black Crowes are just masters at resaddling their one-trick pony.
Kicking off with the blistering skronk of "Midnight From The Inside Out "--a blues bashfest teetering on glorious overload--Lions runs through backroads acoustic songs like the hippie-tinged "Cosmic Friend," "Losing My Mind" and the gospel-sway of "Soul Singing." BC's typical fonky-mama-riff-rawk rises in the bumptious "Young Man, Old Man," "Cypress Tree," the greasy distorto-funk of "Lickin" and the irresistible Stax-slime of "Come On." Lions closes with "Lay It All On Me," a lackluster ballad that attempts "Every Picture Tells a Story" profundity, but simply falls flat. These guys ain't poets, ya know.
Perhaps Chris Robinson's flagellating singing borders on parody, and the band is hopelessly lost in a freak circus of southern rock strut and archaic British blues riffs, but the Black Crowes still know how to act like kings of the jungle.
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