Here is a band who manage to reflect half a century of rock-lineage into our contemporary age, without refraction, without filters. There is no post-modern or ironic twist to the Black Crowes' music. It is true, it is in and of itself. The Crowes are not so much influenced by Zeppelin, The Stones, Aerosmith, The Band, Neil Young. They seemingly, despite the couple of decades in between, come from the same place, draw inspiration from the same well, feed their muse through the same deep sunk roots as those that have stood in the river before them. And roots is certainly what Warpaint is all about. The album covers blues, gospel, balladry, folk, country, all smothered in the thick heavy rock miasma and swirling, smoky haze of the Crowes' usual pomp and stomp.

Opener Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution is the typical Crowes single, full of swagger and big of chorus, it belts out of the speakers like it was the Shake Your Money Maker era all over again. The Crowes are obviously eager to let people know they are back. Walk Believer Walk is a heavy beast of track with a stuttering Rich' riff, overlaid by a slide guitar motif by new lead man Luther Dickinson that apes Chris's vocal melody throughout. The thundering bass-line in the chorus from Sven Pipien is superb and one of many moments on the album where his playing shines through. Oh Josephine is one of those beautiful Crowes' ballads, in the style of Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye or Girl From a Pawnshop. It differs from those earlier examples though in its execution rather than in its style. Whereas previously the Crowes may have been tempted to force a song like this into a big and somewhat contrived pay-off, here that temptation is resisted. The song, like many on the album, is presented in a more relaxed and natural setting. There is a new mellowness and maturity to the Crowes that comes inevitably with age. And Luther Dickinson's more countrified lead playing reinforces that old-time Americana feel throughout.

Evergreen could only have been written by the Black Crowes, with its strange off-kilter melody that seems to just hang on to the right side of tuneful and no more. So too the highlight of the album, the brilliantly conceived and executed Movin' On Down The Line. This starts off in a stoned fugue with Chris moaning the mantra "it's alright sisters, it's alright brothers" in his best Mowtown approximation before the band rise together and break into the main body of the song spectacularly on the "wheel within a wheel" line. The Chorus is delicious but the best is saved for last with an inspirational solo from that man Dickinson again. Wounded Bird is an uplifting soaring rocker that almost soars out of human hearing range in the coda.

After this the Crowes break the album down with a revivalist gospel rocker originally recorded by the Reverend Charlie Jackson, a stomping good-time jig that sounds like it's come straight from the juke joints frequented by the travelling bluesmen of the early 20th century. It effectively ushers in one of the great album codas of recent years, in the form of the heartbreaking country ballad There's Gold In Them Hills and the remarkable mountain folk of Whoa Mule. There's Gold In Them Hills lyrically isn't the first song on the album to hint at the themes of break-up, following Chris's separation from wife Kate Hudson. And it isn't the first song on the album informed by the knowledge of making his own music with New Earth Mud. Chris communicates his true-life experience here through a lyric written in the style of a western parable and sings it with just the right mixture of resignation, heartbreak and hope. Lines such as "On the first day of winter I was set to leave, With the lost awe of true love in my eye" and the wonderfully evocative verse "I've broken my heart with diamonds and gold, Through scandal through madness through cold, All I have left is this grey in my beard, This mountain and the stories that I've told" prove convincingly moving. The closing track Whoa Mule comes from an ancient place, stringing together what on the surface seem like folk cliché, to form a convincing roots classic that could have been written any time in the last hundred years. If Springsteen had covered this on his Seeger Sessions exploration of American folk and roots music no one would have batted an eyelid. It's almost impossible to believe this is something the Crowes have only just knocked out in the past few months. It is in such moments that the Black Crowes transcend their influences and era and rightly take their place in the pantheon of great American songwriters.

Always a great band, it's been a long time since the Crowes effectively captured that greatness on record. But this is a great Crowes album, more over it is simply a great album. And although it may not match the drug-fuelled adrenalin rush of their halcyon days, it is a vivid and absorbing shot of where the band are now - older, wiser, happier, letting it all ride.

Win a copy of Warpaint, courtesy of IMAROCKER by answering the following question:

In 1994 the Crowes recorded a notorious, x-rated (and to date unreleased) film performance to promote their Amorica album. What is the title of this never-seen film?

Send your answer to DUCK via PM on the www.imarocker.com forums or e-mail duck_328@hotmail.com

(this competition will run until 31/03/08, the winner will be selected at random from all correct entries and announced on www.imarcocker.com forums and contacted via e-mail/PM)

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