Robinson’s debut solo album, 2004’s Paper, never strayed too far from the southern rock template he’d first fashioned with brother Chris in The Black Crowes almost 15 years earlier, while its 2011 follow-up Through A Crooked Sun charted a more varied, individual and personal course. Third time out he opts for the best of both worlds; here he’s as bluesy and testifying as early Crowes on The Giving Key and I Know, but it’s a seemingly more satisfied Robinson elsewhere on the record.
‘This is living, a life worth living/No pressing motives, no calls to make,’ he sings on the reflective country strum of Down The Road, perhaps addressing the pressures that forced the Crowes into more than one hiatus since the turn of the century.
While there’s nothing here that breaks radical new ground, it’s the sound of a man wallowing in contentment, maybe for the first time, having perfected the balancing act of stadium guitar icon and humble jobbing troubadour.
