ARTIST: The Black Crowes
ALBUM: Before the Frost… Until the Freeze
LABEL: Silver Arrow Records
RELEASE DATE: September 1, 2009
Keepin’ You On Ice
Written by Brett Bayne
The Black Crowes love to perform onstage—fully a third of the band’s major-label releases have been live albums, including the two-disc Warpaint Live, released earlier this year. So it’s no big surprise that the band would eventully turn their attention to building a hybrid. Famished for an opportunity to create something musically adventurous, the Crowes have recorded their eighth studio album live in front of an audience of diehard fans in Woodstock, New York. It’s not a new idea—Todd Rundgren recorded his 1991 album 2nd Wind the same way—but it’s one that isn’t easily pulled off, and the Crowes nail it. (Almost to prove their mettle, the band has unnecessarily preserved their audience’s applause between tracks, as if to say, “See? This was recorded live!”) Before the Frost won’t come close to reaching the five-time multiplatinum success of the group’s debut disc, 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker, but it’s an experiment that works on virtually every level: impressive musicianship, expert jams, a fully realized suite of tunes and the wizened production of the band’s newest guitarist, Paul Stacey (who replaced Marc Ford in 2006).
Before the Frost kicks off deceptively, with a cutesy-pie ragtime piano and banjo that gradually builds into the rollicking “Good Morning Captain,” which suggests a harder-rocking Jimmy Buffett. The aural bouquet that follows consists largely of bluesy, laid-back Southern rock, typified by standout tracks “Been a Long Time” (at 7:48, the group’s longest song to date), and the slide guitar-drenched “Appaloosa,” a melodic cousin of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Only on two tracks do the Crowes stray from their signature sound: “I Ain’t Hiding” may surprise fans with its shameless disco groove, and Crosby, Stills and Nash are hauntingly channeled in the reflective “What Is Home.”
Consumers are used to getting so-called bonus tracks on their CDs, but the amazingly prolific Black Crowes have stepped up with a startling bonus for purchasers of Before the Frost on disc—they’re offering nine bonus tracks on what amounts to an altogether different album, available as a download. The companion album, Until the Freeze, is twangy, rock-free fun, with folky singalong numbers like the fiddle-infested “Shine Along” and the honky-tonk “Shady Grove.” Lovers of hit rockers like “Hard to Handle” and “Twice as Hard” will likely feel like they’ve accidentally downloaded a breezy Matthews Southern Comfort LP from 1973 and fall blissfully to sleep, but diehard Crowe comrades will cream over the extra 46+ minutes of tunes. Make whatever you will of the Freeze; the Frost is one of 2009’s most unexpected delights.