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By STEVE MASCORD
FOR Atlanta, Georgia-based five-piece the Black Crowes, the title of their debut album is where the irony and wit stops.
For the LP’s bluesy and occasionally stirring 11 tracks provide all that their cowboy boots and permless haircuts suggest, but nothing more — it’s a moneymaker for sure, but for mine it doesn’t shake nearly enough. Perhaps the greatest compliment the record can be afforded is that when the Black Crowes cover Otis Redding’s “Hard To Handle”, the tracks around it are so rootsy that it sounds like it may as well be an original.
But that sixties-paced bar room sensibility is also the George Drakoulias-produced LP’s biggest shortcoming. Aside from the storming “Twice As Hard”, the album plods along with a gratifying but frustratingly samey assuredness.
Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones, obviously the Black Crowes’ chief reference points, never fall into the trap of clumping chunks of acoustic-based, cry-in-yah-whiskey laments together like these protégés have done. However, ration yourself one track a day and you won’t fail to be impressed.
There are no poor songs, with “Seeing Things” outstanding lyrically and “She Talks To Angels” bordering on classic status. But, the lack of variety has me ranking the Georgia Satellites’ last album and the debut by New York’s Company Of Wolves as far better buys for southern rock connoisseurs.
Nevertheless, Shake Your Moneymaker remains at the forefront of what will hopefully be a burgeoning revival of real music.
This review first appeared in HM #18, October 1990
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