Fuse CD Review: The Black Crowes Take Flight — Separately

There’s one thing both Robinson brothers lack outside of The Black Crowes: creative tension.

flux

By Scott McLennan

Fans of The Black Crowes have had many opportunities to catch brothers Chris and Rich Robinson around the region this summer. Just not together. In The Black Crowes.

The Robinsons, who started performing together in 1985 and assembled the Black Crowes in 1989, are now leading respective namesake bands, with Rich proclaiming last year that due to an argument with Chris over business practices, the vehicle that carried them to fame was done.

For context, let’s remember that rarely during the Crowes tenure has there been harmony between the brothers, and that “never again” means something entirely different when speaking about rock ’n’ roll. So let’s not get too hung up on what was and what may be, and instead take in what is.

In a bit of subliminal — if not overt — sibling rivalry, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Rich Robinson released new albums about a month apart this summer and commenced tour cycles that have the brothers closely tracking each other.

Rich Robinson led his band through the Brighton Music Hall in Boston on Friday (as well as handling dates in nearby venues in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), while the Chris Robinson Brotherhood played to a sold-out crowd at the Cabot Theater in Beverly on July 30 as part of a big New England swing. (The band will be back at the Paradise in Boston on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.)

The new albums reveal the different direction each brother is heading post-Crowes, while the proximity of the live shows helped highlight how much these two continue to share even while going their separate ways.

As for the new albums, Chris Robinson Brotherhood’s Any Way You Love, We Know How You Feel is the most satisfying release to date from this troupe. The hazy psychedelia Chris Robinson likes to traffic in finally get sufficient moorings to keep the sound from drifting off, as it occasionally would on the band’s three previous studio records. Get past the overtly trippy trappings, such as the song titles “Narcissus Soaking Wet” and “Give Us Back our Eleven Days,” and you’ll find singer Chris Robinson in sharp form.

With Flux, Rich Robinson continues to deliver the sturdy, satisfying guitar rock he honed so well on 2011’s Through a Crooked Sun and elevated to dazzling heights on 2014’s The Ceaseless Sight. Compared to Chris, Rich did a better job finding his solo voice first (the two brothers have deep solo catalogs developed when they were in The Black Crowes), but Flux has a few too many moments that feel like retreads of older songs.

Flux isn’t a disappointment or setback for Rich Robinson, just more of a holding pattern, one with some exquisite guitar work and solid rock ’n’ roll built on the foundation of classic ’60s and ’70s post-Beatles Brit rock (no accident that Rich was asked to fill in this summer for an ailing Mick Ralphs when Bad Company toured in the U.S.).

But as much as Chris evokes the San Francisco Summer of Love on his latest outing, and Rich takes guitar and melody to bittersweet themes on his album, in the brothers’ respective area concerts, their shared musical DNA was quite evident.

First, neither brother is entirely out of the Crowes’ nest. Each has a former Crowe in his band; Chris has keyboardist Adam MacDougall, while Rich has enlisted bassist Sven Pipien. When each turned to the Crowes song catalog, they both ended up picking tunes from the generally overlooked album Before the Frost, with Chris playing the Stones-y “I Ain’t Hiding” in Beverly and Rich unfurling the one-two punch of “What is Home” and “Kept My Soul” in Boston.

Both brothers looked to their U.K. influences when it came to their encores. The Chris Robinson Brotherhood closed its Cabot gig with T. Rex’s “Rabbit Fighter,” while Rich went for the glory of Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” and giddiness of Humble Pie’s “The Sad Bag of Shaky Jake” to end his two-plus-hour concert.

Chris Robinson Brotherhood. Photo: Jay Blakesberg

The Chris Robinson Brotherhood. Photo: Jay Blakesberg.

The shows also dispelled any notion that either brother is just interested in recycling his respective strength in The Black Crowes. Each has his musical proclivity, but it does not come at the expense of the broader terrain explored throughout the group’s storied run. The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, for instance, didn’t let the gentle prettiness of Joe Tex’s R&B gem “I Want to (Do Everything For You)” get lost in a loping jam. And Rich breathed fiery extended solos and all-around new life into some of his older solo songs, particularly “Veil” and “Yesterday I Saw You” (which also amounted to a good argument for why he has remastered and re-released his back catalog previously scattered across a few different labels; this is good stuff, and shouldn’t be made difficult to find).

But here’s the thing both brothers lack outside of The Black Crowes: creative tension.They are undoubtedly in charge of the respective groups. And regardless of the wide berth each Robinson gives to his bandmates, those players are clearly supporting the front man’s vision.

The tussles the Robinson’s get into off stage can be ugly and petty. But the way they pushed and pulled at each other’s ideas in the music made The Black Crowes special. Even during its earliest, most wildly kinetic phase, the Robinsons were as much about art ’n’ soul as they were rock ’n’ roll.

Whether we ever get that double-barreled approach again remains to be seen, but Rich Robinson confronted the concern head on, calling out a few guys standing in the back of the Brighton Music Hall, arms across their chests.

“‘It’s just not the same,’” he jokingly imagined them saying, a rare bit of stage patter from the ‘quiet’brother. No, it’s not. But it ain’t bad either.


Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, The Providence Journal, The Portland Press Herald and WGBH, as well as to the Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.

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