'Warpaint' doesn't sound like just another Black Crowes album

The phenomenal thing about "Warpaint" is not the fact that Chris Robinson's throat-made-of-leather still sounds as young/old as it did in 1990. It's not the fact that the sonic experimentation of 2001's "Lions" has been more fully realized and developed. It's not even the shockingly lame cover art. The truly phenomenal thing about "Warpaint" is that, quite simply, it doesn't sound like "just another Black Crowes album."

True, "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution" is an Allman-and-Stones tribute in the fiery fashion the Crowes have always pulled off so well. But one listen to "Walk, Believer, Walk" shows that, while this is still the same band, they've taken advantage of their seven-year hiatus and the addition of new members (keyboardist Adam MacDougall and North Mississippi Allstars guitarist Luther Dickinson) to flesh out all their pseudo-psychedelic hintings in glorious full form.

"Evergreen" is a slinky, sludgy lump of Cream-style proto-metal; "Oh Josephine" is a beautiful slide-guitar-heavy ballad; and the phenomenal "Who We See The Deep" finds Robinson leering lecherously over one of the most effective grooves in the band's arsenal. The mandolin of "Locust Street," the bluesy shuffle of "Wounded Bird" and the truly inspired cover of the Reverend Charlie Jackson's "God's Got It" show that the band know how to stay true to their roots while still expanding on the formula.

The Black Crowes have been, since their inception, one of the most exciting, tried-and-true, good-time rock'n'roll bands in the country, and eighteen years down the line, they've not given an inch. But, while still being able to rock like 20-year-olds, their maturity has allowed them to construct pieces like the beautiful, haunting "There's Gold In Them Hills," an acoustic ballad with a hair-raising vocal and perfectly complimentary backing instrumentation, that builds from nothing to just before the point of climax, then fading out to leave listeners breathless when the chain-gang sing-a-long of "Whoa Mule" kicks in -- and then floors listeners by somehow ending the album on an even more beautiful, more haunting note.

All in all, it's not their best album (1992's "The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion"), their most adventurous (1996's "Three Snakes and One Charm"), and it isn't overtly catchy (in contrast to 1999's "By Your Side"). But the Crowes are a band that sounds more full of life than they have in over a decade, and it sounds like they've finally got the skills and the personnel to make really phenomenal things happen.