Black Crowes Squawk at Sham Maxim Review

Pick a number, any number: Maxim's 2.5-star rating—out of 5—for the Black Crowes' latest album was little more than a guess, the magazine admitted yesterday. No advanced copies were released, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, but that didn't stop Maxim's critic from decreeing in the March issue that Warpaint "hasn't left Chris Robinson and the gang much room for growth."

Maxim apologized to its readers for the blunder, but, "What's next?" asks the manager. "Concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read, and film reviews of films never seen?" Maxim's editorial director insists it normally assigns stars only to albums heard in their entirety. Warpaint, the Crowes' first album in seven years, is due out Tuesday. (More music stories.)