Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
I resent Counting Crows for releasing “Hard Candy.” There, I said it. It was a terrible album that went terrible places and featured the terrible bastardization of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”
As a longtime fan of Counting Crows, I guess I should have seen it coming. Their ’99 album, “This Desert Life,” was a mix of hits and misses that couldn’t measure up to their previous two albums, “Recovering the Satellites” (1996) and “August and Everything After” (1993). “Recovering the Satellites” gave ’90s music “A Long December” and an extensive sampling of grunge/alternative rock tracks and vivid, layered lyrics; and just be honest and acknowledge that “August and Everything After” is unarguably the best Counting Crows album out there.
They even put out a killer two-disc live album somewhere in there, but the 2000s were not nearly as kind to Counting Crows as the ’90s were, and I’m a little bitter about that. I mean, what self-respecting rock band releases a single like “Accidentally in Love” for a movie like “Shrek 2?” Even if it got nominated for an Oscar, it was just awful.
I gave up on Counting Crows shortly after they jumped the shark and partnered with Vanessa Carlton on “Big Yellow Taxi” so she could lay down the ever-important “Mmm bop bop bop” vocals over Joni Mitchell’s activist lyrics. I didn’t even intend on listening to their newest album, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings,” but when someone hands me a CD of my formerly “favorite band of all time” and asks for my opinion, I guess I’m inclined to give it a little listen.
I’ve suspected all along that Counting Crows had been making good music and keeping it all to themselves for the past eight years – select tracks on “Films About Ghosts” and “New Amsterdam” excluded – “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings” lends serious credibility to my hypothesis.
The album is ostensibly about two distinct weekly time periods for many of us as college students: manic, lively, carefree Saturday nights, and hungover, quiet, occasionally regretful Sunday mornings. In reality, it is a stylistic synthesis drawing on the emotionally wrought lyrics and solid rock sounds of Counting Crows’ early career while experimenting with twangy pedal steel guitars and occasional indie pop vocals.
It seems that Counting Crows have finally claimed their new sound and have become comfortable with their hybrid style. Gone is the over-exaggerated country whine in frontman Adam Duritz’s voice and awkward bubblegum pop beats from the trainwreck, “Hard Candy.”
The album opens strong with “1492,” a sound reminiscent of the harder tracks on “Recovering the Satellites.” Lyrically, it kicked off the CD’s “Saturday Nights” with images of sex, fame, confusion and insignificance. The song describes both the overwhelming need for solitude and a yearning significance in life and human interaction.
Much of the album, especially “Saturday Nights,” explores the social tragedy that is celebrity. For years, Counting Crows have struggled with being celebrities through their music – “Mr. Jones”, “Have You Seen Me Lately?”, “Baby I’m a Big Star Now” and “Colorblind.” Thematically, the band certainly isn’t reaching too far beyond their comfort zone, but they continue to address the issue with fresh sounds from new angles.
The second half of the album, “Sunday Mornings,” wanders from California to D.C. to the United Kingdom in search of meaningful life experiences. It paints a thoughtful, melancholy memory in “On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago,” and coming to terms with those experiences they did have throughout the life of the album in “Come Around:” A much less depressed and fatalistic finale to this album than Counting Crows could have achieved in their younger, more tortured years.
In short, I accept “Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings” as an apology from Counting Crows for their indiscretions at the start of this decade and I look forward to the development and refinement of their new sound. The album blends a variety of sounds and subtle themes that provides a little something for everyone and a refreshing offering for dedicated fans who stuck with the band through their darker, more bubblegum pop-y years.
Grade: B+
