Album review: The Black Crowes, Amorica (1994)

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON NOV. 10, 1994

By Steve Newton

You know there are too many crows in the backyard when premier music-trade mag Billboard, in its October 15 issue, runs a promo shot of the Black Crowes and mistakenly calls it a picture of Counting Crows.

Although both bands are similar in that they rely heavily on retro musical stylings, they are certainly crows of a different colour. One is a genuine outfit that has managed to mould its rootsy R&B-ish influences into a sound of its own, and the other is a flash-in-the-pan Van Morrison rip-off.

Guess which one’s gonna last.

With their third release, Amorica, the Black Crowes give the impression that they’ll be around for years to come—or at least as long as guitar-drenched, blues-heavy tunes sung with real passion are popular.

Gone is the Faces-style boogie that typified the band’s 1990 debut, Shake Your Moneymaker; milder arrangements with more thoughtful instrumentation help the band branch out.

That could be a mark against the Crowes for fans of their more basic, riff-driven early tunes, but the conviction evident in the band’s southern-flavoured roots stylings is hard to knock.

To hear the full audio of my 1990 interview with Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can also eavesdrop on my uncut, one-on-one conversations with rock legends since 1982.