When presented with a tangible copy of their new album, Before the Frost…Until the Freeze, no one can say the Black Crowes don’t have style. The album cover is a carefree watercolor painting of rolling green hills and blue sky, with the band’s name and album title scrawled in black Sharpie in the upper left hand corner. A picture on the back of the insert completes the cozy feel — the band lounges in front of a wood cabin with piles of cut firewood on either side of them, looking like woodsmen themselves with long hair, bushy beards and outdoor winter clothing.
Having recently helped the up-and-coming rock band Truth & Salvage Co. get on its feet by adopting them as the opening act for their tour, the Black Crowes have changed their tune to one of charity and that change is reflected in their music. The band is known for writing and performing in a style of music exactly one decade late. Chris Robinson’s raspy, down-home vocals, Steve Gorman’s steady, straightforward drums, Richard Robinson’s jaunty boogie guitar and Adam MacDougall’s vamping rock organ speak more to the classic rock styles of the Rolling Stones and Guns N’ Roses than the meandering melodies, harsh breakdowns and wispy lyrics of typical ’90s bands like Weezer and Collective Soul. And though their new album still has that synthetically revived classic rock sound, it is more subdued.
“The Last Place That Love Lives,” the first track off Before The Frost…, plunges right into this new music ideology with slow, contemplative instrumentation and a hymn-like reverence that is more suited to a campfire in the northern woods than the rowdiness of a rock concert. The next few tracks pick up the pace a bit, though the overall tone remains low key. Then again, the Crowes have always promoted a laid-back image, aiming to offer nothing more than grooves and good feelings, as the lyrics in “Make Glad” seem to advocate, urging listeners to, “Make glad./ Find the beauty in the broken./ Make glad./ May your heart always be open.”
A slow pace can be both a blessing and a curse. While deep-digging guitar chords in tracks like “Kept My Soul” can make this a pleasant experience, other songs such as “Houston Don’t Dream About Me” and “Been A Long Time (Waiting On Love)” can drag on and bog the album down.
The second half of the album employs their slightly new sound to an even greater extent than the first, with most of the tracks sounding like the full-on folk sound of groups like The Band. With the intricate guitar picking of “Shine Along” and fast-paced fiddle in “Garden Gate,” we go from the peaceful isolation of the northern woods to the energy of a warm barn full of people dancing. The Black Crowes are pushing their typical boundaries with this one, really working to take music to its roots.
Although the album can drag a bit sometimes and some of the songs seem repetitive, the band is redeemed in the end by the sheer weight of their experience. One cannot deny these guys have talent. The yawns begin but they are cut short by the pure personality that infuses the fun and catchy “I Ain’t Hiding,” the saucy “Lady of Avenue A,” the rhythmic “And The Band Played On,” and the confident “A Train Still Makes A Lonely Sound.” All of it, of course, is reminiscent of the ’80s and the glory days of rock and roll. Add the fact that they are still experimenting and playing with their sound after all these years and you can count Before The Frost… as a truly decent new release.
