Chris Robinson in voluntary exile on main street
Chris Robinson has always been the leader of the Black Crowes. The American musician, who turns 58 today, has added over thirty years of activity to the band’s solo career (four albums from 2002 to 2007) and his career with Chris Robinson Brotherhood (six albums from 2012 to 2017). What you can read below is the review he wrote for us Alfredo Marziano Of “New earth mud”Chris’ solo debut from October 2002.
Here it is, finally in circulation in Italy too, Chris Robinson’s solo album released in the USA already last autumn: cause or effect, it’s not clear, of the divorce from his brother Rich and of the hard-rock-blues at full volume of the Black Crowes. The solarized images on the cover and our new look – beard, glasses, half-closed eyes, a sweetly “out of tune” look – provide some clues to the turning point of the vocalist, a rock and roll star in voluntary exile on the main street (like the Stones of “Exile ”, he also took refuge in France: at the Gang Studios in Paris). And in fact there are no traces of the roaring biker music of “Lions” and the metallic rock of Corvi Neri, in “New earth mud”.
Perhaps the victim of an identity crisis, Robinson has slowed down, and his album becomes a sound diary with a lazy, sunny and intimate mood that replicates his well-known obsessions for the 70s but from a different, singer-songwriter angle and neo-folkie (even if he does not have the lyrical depth and linguistic vocabulary of the singer-songwriter Robinson).
The singer from Atlanta wrote and recorded his songs with a small group of friends – pianist Matt Jones, Jeremy and Paul Stacey, also co-producer – aiming for maximum expressive linearity, among introspective lyrics that often deal with the ” down” of life as a rock star and music that recovers the clarity of a certain electro-acoustic rock of the 70s, on both sides of the Atlantic: the Stones of exhausted acoustic ballads instead of those with incendiary riffs; the Van Morrison of the American period and the young Rod Stewart of “Every picture tells a story” instead of the torrid Southern rock like Allman or Lynyrd Skynyrd of the group records.
Indeed, it almost seems as if the former Crowes frontman took certain sounds directly from the source, sampling them from the originals of the time: the electric guitar glissando of “Silver car”, for example, which is a perfect replica of Pink Floyd of “Dark side” and “Breathe”. That is one of the many, placid (and splendid) ballads that pepper the collection. Among the best there are also “Kids that ain’t got none” (vintage vibrato guitar, beautiful piano phrase, solid melodic structure: everything perfect) and “Barefoot under the cherry tree”, again the ghosts of Rod the Mod and Jagger who hover over a heartfelt ballad that draws applause despite the well-known theme (the search for a lost simplicity, far from glamour).
Hypnotic, tinkling guitar arpeggios also envelop pieces like “Fables” and “Katie dear” (a love song for his actress-wife Kate Hudson), bleary, morning eyes that look at the bustle of the world from afar.
“Safe in the arms of love”, an excellent rock ballad that opens the dance, could come from a Seventies band like Spooky Tooth or Humble Pie, while Robinson’s voice – never so controlled, the reflective tone of the songs he holds to curb the uvula without giving up the right amount of fire in the veins – calls for comparisons with Van The Man in “Sunday sound” (which also evokes the Grateful Dead of “American beauty” and its surroundings) and in “Untangle my mind”: a small masterpiece, the latter, in a slow crescendo between a vaguely Zeppelin-like acoustic riff, a romantic sax and deep soul moods that give you chills.
Only on a couple of occasions does Robinson abandon his spiritual hermitage to dive back into the jungle of sounds: “Ride” is a superfunk that pays respectful tribute to the “blaxploitation” soundtracks of the 70s, to Sly and War; while “Could you really love me?” it is perhaps the most obvious point of contact with the music of the Crowes (but also, dangerously, with Lenny Kravitz: and it is no coincidence that it is perhaps the weakest piece in the setlist).
The rest is still in the psychedelic folk style with the guitars, electric and acoustic, which weave organic and shimmering textures (the neo-vetero-psychedelia of “Better than the sun”, the madrigal air and the shamanic singing of “She’s on her way”) and Robinson’s voice to search for new nuances of “understatement” and minimalist expression. Kissed by electric flashes and sunbeams “that look like stroboscopic lights”, the former Crowes has discovered the brightest part of himself in isolation. Some early fans, gripped by nostalgia, immediately wrinkled their noses: but can we bet that, as the Americans say, in the years to come “New Earth Mud” will become a “minor classic”?
