Black Crowes: Happiness Bastards (digital outlets)

The 30 year story of the Black Crowes, the sibling rivalry between singer/guitarist Chris and his guitarist brother Rich, the side projects, line-up changes, drugs, break-ups and reunions makes for complex and sometimes hilarious reading.

For a while they seemed the Band Most Likely on the back of their debut Shake Your Money Maker and its sprawling follow-up The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.

They were the almost perfect distillation of Southern stoner rock, the ramshackle delight of the Faces and a fusion of Aerosmith and the Exile-era Stones.

In 1992, they played the Supertop in Auckland (capacity c.13,000) to huge acclaim, notably when the backdrop canvas dropped to reveal a massive marijuana leaf.

But – to default to their huge hit – they were hard to handle.

The next time they played in Auckland was in 2008 and they were downgraded to the Powerstation (capacity c.1000).

Despite all the sibling scrapping they sometimes made excellent albums: Warpaint in 2008 is a solid rock album and their final one as a band before a major schism between the brothers was 2009's Before the Frost . . . Until the Freeze which has long been an Essential Elsewhere album.

But that was their last studio album, until now.

Reformed and a bit re-formed (the brothers are now in their 50s), the Crowes now have Chris'n'Rich on speaking terms and – hooking up with another line-up of new members – on the same rock'n'roll/Southern rock pages for 10 new originals, many of which sound as sharp and fresh as the band did way back then.

When they aren't firing on all rock cylinders they step back for the acoustic-framed country duet Wilted Rose (with Nashville-based singer Lainey Wilson) and Cross Your Fingers which stalks from acoustic to thumping rock in the manner of Led Zeppelin.

But mostly they plug into a point between their old selves and aforementioned influences (the Stonesy blues of Bleed It Dry, the Faces stagger of Follow the Moon) as well as guitar riffery (Dirty Cold Sun) and head-down punkish-boogie (Rats and Clowns).

It looses impetus with lesser material like the honky-tonk stomper Flesh Wound and nothing reaches the peaks heard on their Moneymaker debut, Warpaint or Before the Frost.

But it's encouraging to know the Robinson brothers are making their enjoyable noise again and perhaps even enjoying some kind of Southern harmony after all the years of Davies/Gallagher-like sibling sniping.

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You can hear this album at Spotify here