Siblings: you can’t live with ’em, you can’t chop off their heads and boil them in tar. So former Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson instead decided to stick one to his gobshite elder brother and ex-bandmate-turned-antagonist Chris Robinson by forming a band that does pretty much the same job without him.
High Water II was recorded in the same sessions that produced The Magpie Salute’s debut album, High Water I (duh!), though like that record it could easily have been laid down at any point during the Crowes’ 90s heyday – or 25 years before that.
If the tight gospel boogie and brothel-house piano of Gimme Something sound kind of familiar, well, it’s not as if Robinson’s original band were brimming with originality.
Chris Robinson has snarkily called The Magpie Salute “a Black Crowes tribute act”, which is both on the nose and the best compliment he can pay them.
High Water II isn’t The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, but it might just be By Your Side. In the absence of anything else, we’ll take it.
