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The Black Crowes’ early-90s masterpiece The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion took eight days to record. Hearing it left you wondering why other bands took so long to make records not even half as good. A Pound Of Feathers, hot on the heels of 2024’s marvellous Happiness Bastards, required a leisurely 10 days. Perhaps the Crowes rested on the seventh day, saw all they had made, and beheld that it was very good indeed.
Out of the traps they fly, roaring and snorting with Profane Prophecy. On one side you have Rich Robinson, honours graduate from Keef university, on guitar but funkier than the master has been in decades. On the other, his brother Chris extolling us to “Come on!”, declaring it’s all “Right on!”, and boasting of his ‘degree in debauchery’, having ‘slept all night in a hollow log’ before scoffing ‘a casino breakfast off the kitchen floor’. What more could anyone ask from a rock’n’roll song?
These high-flying birds offer varieties on this ironclad formula with Cruel Streak (‘Close your eyes if you get scared!’); Do The Parasite (a riff as dirty as a mechanic’s overalls, a Hammond organ behind the chorus, Chris ‘sharing fleas and hotel keys’ and shouting “Get down” before the solo); It’s Like That (more Hammond, more riffs, female backing vocals transported in from 1974); and the mighty You Call This A Good Time (I certainly do) which owes a sizable donation to the AC/DC widows and orphans fund as it wonders ‘what went on in that bathroom stall?’.
Alongside these live killers-in-waiting we get the promised slightly experimental material. Pharmacy Chronicles and Queen Of The B-Sides are the pleasing country-tinged Stonesy ballads that you might expect, but High And Lonesome is violin-driven AOR soul that might have heard a Hall & Oates record, and Blood Red Regrets is minor-key Fleetwood Mac with orchestral overtones and a hippie-leaning acoustic breakdown.
It’s the last two tracks that stretch their wings the furthest: Eros Blues has tempo varying (uh, oh) movements, and Doomsday Doggerel is an odd rumbling beast that cops a feel of U2’s Bullet The Blue Sky while seeking out a stronger chorus.
A Pound Of Feathers is not quite as immediate, then, as Happiness Bastards, but repeated listens pay off. Its relationship to that record is similar to the way recently re-released Amorica sits alongside The Southern Harmony. The Crowes’ blessed resurrection keeps rolling.
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