The Black Crowes
Shake Your Money Maker

THE REVIEW

“Shake Your Money Maker” by the Black Crowes is an album that practically lacks nothing. Let's take a milestone of Hard Rock/Blues: “Led Zeppelin IV.” In an album like that, we find songs like “Black Dog” or “Rock n’ Roll” with driving rhythms and powerful riffs that could bring down a stadium, and then ballads like “Going to California” or the legendary “Stairway to Heaven,” concluding with the relentless and perhaps my favorite track of the album, the inexorable “When the Levee Breaks,” which trudges through its 7 minutes and more of duration always on the same chord progression in Open D. But why am I talking about this album instead of reviewing the one indicated by the title, namely the debut of the Black Crowes led by the Robinson brothers? Well, to provide a point of reference, of course. If we take the Led album as the canon, a perfect representation of a genre from which every hard rock band should draw and try to emulate, well, Shake Your Money Maker takes on the challenge and comes very close.

The album opens with “Twice as Hard,” a song that feels the full influence of Page on the Crowes with a good dose of bottle neck slide that's very “Southern,” which is never a bad thing. “Jealous Again,” on the other hand, truly makes you cry, but not because the song is particularly sad—quite the opposite. The melancholy hits you when it crosses your mind that those piano bridges, that strumming rhythm on the guitar, and that sharp, penetrating voice you definitely heard at least 20 years before on Stones' CDs. The melancholy is then followed by anger, reflecting on how Jagger & Co. have become in the '90s.

The album continues with cheerful tones halfway between Blues and Hard Rock with simple solos that are not overly pretentious but absolutely functional. You finally reach the ballad zone and inevitably encounter “Seeing Things” and the touching “She Talks to Angels.” The former maintains an electric tone even if extremely clean and laid-back, accompanied by a jazz organ that feels very, very John Paul Jones. The latter starts with a dreamy acoustic riff (I remember the first time I learned it, it gave me great satisfaction because it sounds divine). In this track, all the components blend together with disarming simplicity and harmony, a bit like in “Stairway to Heaven,” where every instrument, every note, really seems in its place.
Then comes the main course, the track that highlighted a band just blooming, playing a genre that, yes, is always an evergreen, but let's face it, was starting to get a little stale in the '90s. All this in a vast sea dominated by Metallica at the peak of their career, AC/DC still going strong, and Guns N’ Roses fresh from their incredibly fierce and badass debut with Appetite. The track in question can only be “Hard to Handle,” a cover of the legendary soulman Otis Redding. The song breathes new life in this hard rock rearrangement that seems to fit perfectly for its groove and composition. Although I don't consider it the best of the album, it's a song you could listen to over and over without ever getting tired.

Unfortunately, the album doesn't conclude with a similarly memorable “When the Levee Breaks” but with a more than acceptable “Stare It Cold.” The best part of the track? Absolutely the final part when the rhythm takes off in such an energetic closing that truly makes you yearn for the Stones of the golden times and makes it impossible for you to stay still wherever you may be.

In conclusion, “Shake Your Money Maker” is one of those albums I would definitely take to a desert island and never tire of listening to. It manages to combine in a rather original mix, genres like Blues, rock, and hard rock, all spiced with a bit of American Spirit. It is an album from which emerges an incredible passion for music in one of its many declinations, which materializes in a debut album of truly remarkable intensity and energy, absolutely enviable.