83. Warpaint - The Black Crowes

The Black Crowes broke up after the Lions tour, and it seemed fairly unlikely that they'd be getting back together anytime soon. Yet just a few years later, the band was back again, and with most of the original group back in place! But after a couple of tours and an aborted attempt at an album, things started to fall apart a bit --- Marc Ford left, Eddie Harsch got fired, and suddenly the number of prime-era members was down to the Brothers Robinson and Steve Gorman. They did manage to add North Mississippi All-Stars guitarist (and rock scion) Luther Dickinson, but it was unclear what the destiny of the band was at this point.

Which is what made the content of Warpaint somewhat surprising. The album laid out a set of songs that was both familiar and unfamiliar territory for the Crowes - heavily blues influenced, but with specks of influence of the Robinsons' respective solo careers, plus a more subtle and refined lead guitar sound. The songwriting wasn't quite up to the all-time highs of some of the band's 90s output, but it was also pretty far ahead of By Your Side in places. To some degree the album feels like another progression of the group's sound from Lions, but in many ways it feels like a very different group. Somewhat lost in the shuffle of the group's albums, this one deserves to be revisited.