Audio Mixer: Paul Stacey.

Before anyone had heard a track from WAR PAINT, the Black Crowes' seventh studio outing, it had already kicked up a PR firestorm. Either by deciding to forego listening to it or by obtaining a leaked download, Maxim Magazine panned the record before they even had an official promotional copy. These aging neo-hippies found themselves as unlikely defenders of the teetering music industry by publicly defaming Maxim and demanding an apology. They got it. Maxim ate, er, crow. Having taken shots since their debut record for their unabashed derivative revivalism, the Crowes seem to be a band that functions best when beleaguered.

Fortunately, WAR PAINT is worth the tussle. After a decade-plus on the jam band circuit, the Robinson brothers return to form, gleefully ripping off the Rolling Stones. The lead-off track, "Goodbye Daughters of the Revolution," with its swinging beat and raunchy slide--courtesy of Mississippi All-Star and new Crowe Luther Dickinson--recalls "Let it Bleed." "Oh, Josephine" echoes the weary, processed guitar tones of "Waiting On a Friend." They even ape the Stones aping Gram Parsons on the beautiful, country-tinged number "Locust Street." WAR PAINT occasionally finds the band stretching out into a looser, more natural vibe, as on "Whoa Mule," the closer, augmented by elements of freak-folk and reportedly recorded outside the band's Catskills studio. All told, this is the band's best album since THE SOUTHERN HARMONY AND MUSICAL COMPANION.