Arriving just a little over a year after an eponymous live album,
High Water I is not only positioned as the first official studio album from
the Magpie Salute, but as the initial installment of a two-part album. It's an auspicious beginning for a group led by two
Black Crowes guitarists, but
the Crowes always showed some measure of ambition, slowly expanding that ambition along with their musical horizons.
High Water I doesn't find
the Magpie Salute stretching out so much as embracing everything that
Rich Robinson and
Marc Ford already considered theirs, anchoring themselves on a Southern-fried rock that allows them to indulge in flower-powered country-rock, crunchy blues, back-porch picking, even a bit of funk. Apart from a creeping
Lenny Kravitz-ism, all of this sounds very much like
the Black Crowes, with new singer John Hogg nailing the
Rod Stewart inflections of the absent
Chris Robinson. On this level alone,
High Water I will satisfy those fans who have been missing music that sounds like
the Crowes -- it's much bolder and simpler than
Rich Robinson's appealingly rambling
Flux, for instance -- but it's also true that
the Magpie Salute don't attempt to do much here but hit their mark with precision.