OK, to fill in any who missed the earlier mention, the front man for the once and former Black Crowes, Chris Robinson, has spent the past two years doing two solo albums and marrying Kate Hudson. The first album was called "New Earth Mud" (2002) and the second was the one that's the subject of this review, done by Robinson and his band, which now sports the same name as the first album, as in "THE New Earth Mud".
This 2004 album, from what I can tell from all the audio snippets on Amazon, is in the mold of the first, and that mold is an authentic-enough return to early-70's vintage rock sounds that I can temporarily ignore certain problems that crop up. Those problems would be weak lyrics, but as long as you're doing something in the next room and the album's cranking along in the background, you'll have a nice groove that's devoid of rap poseur brags, dated-as-soon-as-recorded synth noises, Britney professional pouts and other similar recent mung. What's there is acoustic or tube-amp realism and an occasional nod to the gospel component of rock due to the insertion of the Leslie-loaded Hammond organ backing (think Big Brother's chords behind Janis on "Bobby McGee"). There's a bit of the heavy rock and more than a few "peace and love" numbers that land somewhere between Seals and Crofts and a Renaissance Fair.
Is this a good thing? Yes, not because of the lyrics too bland to mention, but because of this album's preservation of the meter, tempo, arrangement, instrumentation and other such characteristics of a point in rock's evolution that deserves to be remembered. By way of comparison, note that we revere another type, classical music, since it has such a broad range of expression, able to call up mental images of everything from a twittering bird in a morning field to a pain-seared plain of warfare; consider that early 1970's rock and roll comparatively has many times the expressive range of the several species of pop music today. This last consists of only a few choices: postdisco pop-tart funk, bland rock/country, an angry type of rap that seems to get some people (perhaps deservedly) shot, and a smidgin of classical smuggled into film soundtracks. Popular music in about 1970 existed during an era when the music market offered more variety, in no small part due to the fact that "middle of the road" radio stations existed. Those stations provided a crossroads where everything from Burl Ives to Bob Dylan amazingly coexisted and crosspollenated musician and listener alike.
Oh, for the days...
Conclusion: THIS MAGNIFICENT DISTANCE, while not approaching the lyrical punch of "Taxi" by Harry Chapin or "Free Man In Paris" by Joni Mitchell, to say nothing of "Wish You Were Here" or The Pretenders' "Hymn To Her", does approach the musical arrangement palatte of a more civilized age.
