Album Review: Like an Arrow by Blackberry Smoke

It's hard to call the Georgia quartet Blackberry Smoke Southern Rock revivalists. Rather, they work in a tradition carved out by Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band back in the '70s. Gregg Allman sings on "Free on the Wing," the closing track on Like an Arrow, the band's first album for Thirty Tigers, and Skynyrd is often used as a comparison point for the band, but Like an Arrow makes it plain that Blackberry Smoke is a close cousin of the Black Crowes -- a band that sifts through the past to pick its favorite rock, not necessarily pledging allegiance to sounds made south of the Mason-Dixie line.

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Never mind the stylistic width of this ???fifth album, feel the quality Currently, Blackberry Smoke are looking hairier than the Black Crowes emerging from a barber’s bin. But although the image portrays the ultimate stoner jam band, their music is much more disciplined. ADVERTISINGinRead invented by Teads Formed 16 years ago in Atlanta, Georgia as something akin to a second coming of Lynyrd Skynyrd, over the course of four albums they drifted far closer to Nashville.

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Over the last 15 years, country has supplanted rock as the genre of choice for acts that want to flash big sing-along choruses and ripping guitar solos — the kind of Southern-fried jams that make up a good chunk of WZLX’s rock blocks. The Georgia-born band Blackberry Smoke has risen to the top of country-rock’s revivalist heap by writing and playing songs that follow in the footsteps of their forebears — Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band, The Band — while also possessing a knack for self-editing that allows them to avoid noodly overindulgence. Their fifth album, “Like An Arrow,” isn’t reinventing any wheels, but it is a solid collection of punchy tracks, their loping guitar solos and growled lyrics shot through with last-call urgency.

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