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Music, The Critic »

by Rudy Klapper [6 Sep 2009 | No Comment | 1,324 views]
THE CRITIC: The Black Crowes “Before the Frost…Until the Freeze”

Live albums are often a veteran band’s conceit, an effort to translate a group’s energy from the stage to the record player – an endeavor that, more often than not, just leads to an overly long disc of poor-quality tunes, bad between-song banter, and fans wishing they had invested that $19.99 in, say, an actual concert. A band’s decision to release a concert album may be just a mere record company ploy or an exercise in check-how-awesome-we-are-live smugness, but it pales in comparison to that conceit of conceits: the double album. And with the twenty-track Before the Frost…Until the Freeze, long-time roots-rockers the Black Crowes have committed not one, but two cardinal sins of artistic hubris in a single release.