Black Crowes show some extent at Boston Calling 2025
Music
“We’re the one f****** rock ’n’ roll band in any respect this stuff,” Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson lamented throughout Day 2 at Boston Calling 2025.
From the thundering opening strains of “No Communicate No Slave” — off The Black Crowes’ second album, “The Southern Concord and Musical Companion” — Chris Robinson and firm appeared to have one thing to show throughout their Saturday Blue Stage set at Boston Calling. Nicely, particularly Chris Robinson.
“There ARE some rock ’n’ roll individuals right here immediately!” he declared after that first quantity, as the gang lastly began to fill in behind the stalwarts in entrance of the stage. (Everyone else was apparently at Avril Lavigne.) And later he lamented how lonely the band will get once they play a music competition. “We’re the one f—in’ rock ’n’ roll band in any respect this stuff.”
It’s true that, on Saturday anyway, alt-rock and punk-pop had been ruling the day at Boston Calling. However Robinson needn’t have been involved about his band’s skill to hold the blues-based, guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll torch — Robinson, and his brother Wealthy on guitar, can nonetheless rev issues up similar to they did again in 1990, once they rescued us from the Paula Abdul wasteland of up to date fashionable music and offered the proper springboard for the grunge motion simply across the nook.
In the event you’re amongst those that’ve adopted them since then however have did not see them dwell (responsible), Chris Robinson’s stage presence might haven’t been precisely what you’ve pictured all these years. Seems he’s a prancer, somebody who clearly subscribes to the Mick Jagger and Peter Wolf college of gesticulation. (Or perhaps he’s preparing for his upcoming gig singing and twirling mic stands with The Joe Perry Challenge, which hits Fenway with The Who in August.)
Mix that along with his comparatively brief tresses and watermelon-colored jacket (and sun shades!), and he might not have match the basic classic-rocker profile. However he had stage presence to beat the band (actually) and his voice — perhaps somewhat shoutier and fewer textured than it was within the ’90s, however not by a lot — offered a raucous rock injection that left the followers who spurned Avril to see the Crowes in onerous rock heaven.
Not that it was all barn burners — sluggish burn blues had been the order of the day on a riveting “Seeing Issues” off their first album, and Erik Deutsch’s keyboards propelled a smoky groove for “Thorn in My Pleasure.” However it was rollicking, raging blues and rock that Robinson and crew had been decided to ship, and the band greater than got here by way of with pounding takes on previous favorites like “Sting Me,” “Twice as Exhausting,” and a wild and wooly run by way of their first hit, Otis Studying’s “Exhausting to Deal with.” (“We’ve been ridin’ this one a very long time,” Robinson famous.)
The Black Crowes are nonetheless onerous to deal with. #bostoncalling
— Pete Chianca (@pchianca.bsky.social) Might 25, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Throw in a couple of highlights from their glorious newest album, final yr’s “Happiness Bastards” — ”Wanting and Ready” particularly match proper into the basic lineup — and a blazing nearer with “Treatment,” and also you’ve obtained a set that left the assembled spent and happy. “That’s what rock ’n’ roll seems like, keep in mind that sh—?” Robinson requested towards the tip, and people fortunate sufficient to see them Saturday undoubtedly did.
Setlist for Black Crowes at Boston Calling on Saturday:
- No Communicate No Slave
- Rats and Clowns
- Twice as Exhausting
- Sting Me
- Seeing Issues
- Soul Singing
- Exhausting to Deal with
- Thorn in My Pleasure
- Wanting and Ready
- Treatment
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