The Black Crowes, “Happiness Bastards.”

Brothers Chris and Rich Robinson have been busy over the past 15 years, with various bands, solo musical projects, producing other artists’ records and other extracurriculars. What they weren’t doing during that time is putting out any new Black Crowes music. That changes now, however, with the release of Happiness Bastards, the first album of new Crowes songs since 2009’s Before the Frost/Until the Freeze.

It’s clear that all their other various musical pursuits have kept them in game shape, with most of the 10 new songs sounding like much of their best product, starting with their amazing 1990 classic Faces/Stones-style hard rock debut Shake Your Money Maker. The Crowes will tour behind these new songs starting April 2 in Nashville; they’ll play an April 13 date at Fox Theater in Oakland.

True to form, their songs generally fall into two categories: hard-hitting, straight-up rock with guitars mixed high and loud, and slower, more acoustic songs that insinuate rather than bludgeon.

On Happiness Bastards, the emphasis is on the former. Proceedings are in full swing two seconds into the opening track, “Bedside Manners,” which from the start is dragged to life by Rich Robinson’s slide guitar. That slide gives several of the new songs, including “Rats and Clowns,” “Flesh Wound” and “Bleed it Dry,” a mid-tempo slithery oomph. “Bleed,” in particular, sounds like a band trying to work up enough RPMs to lift itself out of a mud pit (a compliment in this context).

Other songs like “Follow the Moon” (and its “Dancing-Days”-ish slide riff), “Cross Your Fingers” and especially “Dirty Cold Sun” go for the tried-and-true chunkier approach, assuming their rightful place in the Crowes’ canon. So does “Wanting and Waiting,” where Chris Robinson sings he’s “nothing but lonely” and that “it’s been a month of Sundays since I could make a smile.” His solution, here and elsewhere on Happiness Bastards, is rock therapy, and it heals like a visit from an old friend, which is exactly what it is.

Stepping a bit more lightly is the uptempo “Flesh Wound.” Its recurring guitar riff and a mid-song piano figure before that ol’ slide kicks back in give this one a poppier feel than the other nine tracks here.

Of course, on this and other Crowes albums, “poppy” is a relative term.

The Black Crowes’ playing on Happiness Bastards comes on both strong and precise, and producer Jay Joyce likely had much to do with that. Joyce has worked with many notables in the rock, country and Americana spaces, and his touch helps infuse this hard rock with connections to those idioms.

Perhaps the strongest such connection of all is “Wilted Rose,” a duet featuring country singer Lainey Wilson. This song and the album’s closer, “Kindred Friend,” represent the band’s quieter side, in much the way 1990’s “She Talks to Angels” functions as a counterpoint to the hard-edged sonic mayhem. Wilson, whose 2020 album Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’ was also produced by Joyce, gives “Wilted Rose” added emotional depth.

The even more country-ish “Kindred Friend,” closes the album on an optimistic, even sentimental note. Might this heartfelt ode be a metaphor for the Black Crowes’ having a welcome word (or song) for their longtime fans? With the reappearance of the Crowes’ familiar guitar wallop, liberally seasoned with organ and boogie piano fills and background female choruses, it sure feels like the return of an old friend.