The Black Crowes
London Brixton Academy
The Robinson Brothers party like it’s 1989 on pandemic-delayed reunion tour.
“Monday night is Saturday night for the fucking cool people,” Chris Robinson says a couple of songs into The Black Crowes’ set. Given that he’s wearing a shiny black suit and a wide-brimmed hat and twirling a colourful umbrella, like the wayward offspring of Mary Poppins and The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it’s hard to take him entirely seriously.
In fairness, Robinson could have strode on stage wearing just a pair of arseless chaps and light-up deeley boppers and the cheer that greets the singer and his band would have been just as loud. This is the penultimate date of the Crowes’ first UK tour since their reunion in 2019, even if the split that preceded it – the product of filial disharmony between Chris and guitarist brother Rich – officially lasted just four years.
In the past, Black Crowes gigs could be utterly transcendent or an exercise in self-indulgent torture, with little in the way of middle ground. Tonight they’re playing to the gallery, playing their 1989 debut album Shake Your Monkey Maker in full followed by a grabbag of tunes from their illustrious past. It’s a canny move. It’s still their biggest album, with all the commercial pull that entails. It’s also a surefire way of signalling to fans that this will be The Black Crowes at their rock’n’roll best, rather than The Black
Crowes choogling themselves to death.
The band’s entrance on stage proves as much. There are no huge video screens or banks of lasers to fanfare their arrival. Instead they gather at the real-life bar that’s been constructed stage right and begin toasting each other, before ambling over to their instruments. And then it’s straight into the elastic riff that introduces album opener Twice As Hard, the elder Robinson practically pirouetting to his mic stand, umbrella a-twirling.
As promised, we get the album in full, in its original order tonight. This is great news for the first 30 minutes. Twice As Hard is followed by the equally bulletproof Jealous Again, Seeing Things and She Talks To Angels, epic and otherworldly, and their take on Otis Redding’s Hard To Handle could start a party in a mortuary. But Shake Your Money Maker is a long way from being the Crowes’ best album, as proven by tail-enders Struttin’ Blues and Stare It Cold, two songs that even the Robinsons’ immediate family would struggle to recognise.
Still, the issue of whether the detente between the brothers will hold is answered tonight. The pair seem to be genuinely enjoying bouncing off of each other. But with Chris and Rich being the sole remaining members from their late-80s-thru-mid-90s heyday, questions have inevitably been asked as to the authenticity of this iteration of The Black Crowes.
The final third of the set sees the shackles come off. In time honoured Crowes fashion, they’ve been mixing it up at previous shows. Tonight we get No Speak No Slave, an exultant Wiser Time and an ever-electric Sting Me, but sadly no My Morning Song. They throw in a cover of The Temptations hit Papa Was A Rolling Stone and a euphoric concluding blast of the old spiritual God’s Got It, by which time the top hat and gaudy umbrella are a distant memory.
Hopefully the revitalised Robinsons will be back soon to tour godlike second album The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, or maybe even serve up some new music at some point. Of course, there’s every chance they’ll have split up and reunited at least twice by then.