Since the release of their debut album Shake Your Money Maker, the Black Crowes—headed by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson—have often been derided for wearing their influences on their sleeves. Most keenly unaware rock critics and fans saw Rich’s use of Open G tuning on “Twice as Hard” (a tuning used, and overused, by Keef and Ry Cooder on some of the band’s biggest hits) and immediately pegged the band as Stones wannabes, when in actuality they were more of an amalgamation of the boozy/bluesy energy of the Faces and the rock star swagger of the Paul Rodgers fronted Free. Sure there are elements of the Stones, as well as Little Feat, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, and any other number of ‘70s bands, but those two bands seemed to be the cornerstones for the sound (and look) of the Crowes.

And while the band has been free to coast on being great at helping baby-boomers relive their hippie years, they have also managed, at times, to transcend their “unoriginal” label and come up with something that, while it may have elements of other groups clearly couldn’t be done by anyone but the Black Crowes.

Chief among these is “Descending,” the final track from their third album, 1994’s Amorica, an album that, at the time, was more renowned for its lurid album sleeve than the music contained within. Amorica is generally a more jammy album than its predecessors; featuring extended jams and even a few bongo solos (a staple of the jamband scene). But “Descending” is tight and focused, bookended by some lovely piano; it’s a mostly acoustic number (with the exception of a lively chorus), featuring some slide guitar that would make Ron Wood proud. But listening to Chris Robinson’s vocals and you’d think it was a straight out rocker—so many artists think an acoustic ballad has to be sung as if one’s alone in their bedroom, but Robinson is clearly in camp that believes that the heartfelt songs are the ones that require the most passion and fire.

One the other end of the spectrum is By Your Side’s single “”—arguably the last truly great rocker the Crowes released (sorry, Lions fans), and it’s also one of the few times that the brothers Robinson managed to bring what could have been a straight up, by-the-numbers Faces rip-off to the next level. Many times they’ve copied the Faces, but few times have they been able to match the sheer energy that that band had in spades. The ass-kicking slide guitar riff again echoes Ron Wood’s work, but it doesn’t come off like its biting from Woody’s playbook as much as it sounds like something he might wish he had written.