Diehard fans will like Crowes' Warpaint

By Jess Camp

Published March 7, 2008

The Black Crowes have been in the midst of a lot of drama lately. Without listening to their newest album Warpaint, Maxim magazine gave it a relatively low score — 2.5 stars — based on their knowledge of the band’s previous albums. Maxim may lack journalistic integrity, but the magazine’s opinion isn’t too far off the mark in this case.

Well, ladies and gents, this reporter has listened to the album in its entirety. In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t know anything about The Black Crowes’ previous albums (Maxim has me beat on this point), so this review will be told from the perspective of a new listener.

Warpaint has an interesting vibe. It’s pretty relaxed and folky. It sounds like something that would have your grandfather snapping his fingers, bobbing his head and tapping his toes. That is, if your old grandpop is the type who wears bandanas, rides motorcycles in chaps and chews tobacco.

(Well, maybe not the chaps part — that would probably disturb everyone who caught sight of him. Unless your geriatric relative is Sean Connery, then it’s sexy.)

Instrumentally, the album is pretty heavy on the guitar solos. You can imagine the guitarist’s fingers sliding up and down the strings slow and bending them sensuously.

He makes the sound reverberate in a nice, strong way that you can feel deep inside. It seems that this band loves the guitar and a focus on vocals/lyrics. The other instruments seem to be an afterthought.

Every rock band has to have a ballad, and this group is no different. The ballad on this disc is called “There’s Gold in Them Hills.” It starts out slow and melancholy. It sounds like something you’d hear on an easy listening or smooth jazz station. You would get the same emotion from listening to the beginning that you would get from staring into a cute, droopy, sad little basset hound’s eyes for a while: a little blah, but overall appreciative. Midway through the song, though, the singer kicks it into a higher gear. It’s like he realized the sun is shining, and that depressing basset hound has now metamorphosed into a beautiful golden retriever frolicking through the meadow.

Another element every album must have is an ode to a gal, and this one has that in the song “Oh Josephine.”

It’s about a guy who’s really happy because he’s got a blue-eyed lady in his life. But this song isn’t your typical, “Oooh, she’s so pretty, I just love her so much.” Nope, this is about a guy who loves Josephine, but for some reason they aren’t totally committed to each other. He knows she doesn’t have another lover; it’s just hard for her to open up.

Judging by this album alone, it’s pretty hard to understand the reasoning behind Rolling Stone calling The Black Crowes one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands. Most of the songs are all pretty long, with the longest song clocking in at over six minutes.

It’s hard to listen to it all the way through, and it’s not terribly exciting. Maybe diehard fans will love this album, but it certainly doesn’t bring anything new and interesting to the world of rock music.