For a teenage Stones freak growing up amidst the stink of hair metal, such as myself, The Black Crowes seemed like a breath of fresh air. So what if their sound was completely recycled from scratched up copies of Sticky Fingers and A Nod Is as Good as a Wink? So what if their best song was an Otis Redding cover? So what if they were yet another bunch of skinny white guys pushing an "I was stewed in blues" image? They didn't screech from lipsticked lips and Ibanezes. They used minimal amounts of Aquanet. And they clearly loved music.
That was The Black Crowes of Shake Your Money Maker. Between that 1989 disc and their second one in 1992, they'd clearly matured a lot. While seventies Stones and Faces continued to be their touchstones, brothers Chris and Rich Robinson's songwriting had moved beyond the generic riffs of their debut for much more distinguished rockers like "Sting Me", "Remedy", "Hotel Illness", and "Black Moon Creeping". Their acoustic ballads no longer tasted like microwaved "Wild Horses". Their Bob Marley cover breathed genuine atmosphere. And when Chris tore up his throat at the climax of "Sometimes Salvation", his delirium sounded startlingly authentic.
Even though hair metal was out and Nirvana was in, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion was still an album that deserved attention in 1992, though one that kind of loses steam in its second half (before coming back with a haunting wallop for that Marley cover). Fortunately, The Black Crowes' continued to mature with their third album. Amorica is their most consistent and distinctive album. Each song is a gem, and they stretch a little beyond their standard electric rock and acoustic balladry to dance with War-esque Latin funk ("High Head Blues"), stripped ramshackle barroom blues ("Downtown Money Waster"), raga rock-ish psych ("Ballad in Urgency"), and woozy stoned country ("Wiser Time", the album's MVP).
As terrific as Amorica is, its presentation on vinyl has apparently been less than stellar. I've held off on buying a copy for years because none of them seemed to be held in high (head) regard by fans. The original white vinyl pressing from 1994 supposedly sounded a bit dead, possibly due to the CD-centric times or due to nearly an hour of music being squashed onto a single LP. The 2015 reissue wisely (timely) expanded the package to two LPs, but supposedly still sounded compressed and wasn't mastered from the original tapes.
For the album's 31st anniversary, Amorica has apparently finally received the reissue it deserves. It's been remastered from the original tapes by Ryan Smith, which is one of those names that makes audiophile geeks prick up their ears. It sounds excellent with lots of detail, which is important for an album with so many different acoustic, keyboard, and percussion textures. Ed Harsch's piano really leaps out of "Downtown Money Waster". However, that's not just because Smith did such a spiffy job. It's also because that particular song appears on side C of this 2-LP set. That side only houses nine and half minutes of music, allowing it to be mastered quite a bit louder than Side B, which tips the scales at nearly twenty-five minutes of music. Cramming so many songs onto one side of this set was a really bizarre choice; "Ballad in Urgency" and "Wiser Time" would have sat so comfortably on side C, allowing more consistency in volume across each side and possibly eliminating the slight bit of inner groove distortion that sneaks in for the final minutes of side B.
If side C is a bit wasteful, side D isn't, as it uses the extra space to fit in a few B-sides: there's a Taj Mahal cover with some rather ugly lyrics, a pretty good riff in search of a vocal melody called "Song of the Flesh", and the best of the trio, Rich Robinson and Marc Ford's lovely acoustic showpiece "Sunday Night Buttermilk Waltz".
Regardless of the weird distribution of songs across sides, Amorica still sounds fabulous on this anniversary set. Both pieces of vinyl are flat and free of pops and crackle.
