I was recently given two different album review assignments for The Burnside Writer's Collective. Through some strange cosmic conspiracy both albums have had their release dates pushed back by months. So, to fill the void, I've written a couple of unsolicited reviews. Both of these albums were already assigned to other writers, so I don't think Burnside has any use for them - so I've decided to throw them up here.

First off, the new Counting Crows album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings:

You know how everybody has that one relationship in their past that none of their friends understood and that, on paper, made no sense whatsoever, but for some reason they still kind of look back on fondly? Like maybe you dated a girl who always wore mom jeans and your friends would always point it out and laugh at you. And, yeah, you knew she looked silly, but somehow you saw past her ridiculously high denim equator, into her heart. You knew she was a good person, and loved animals, and always let you pick the restaurant, so you didn't care about her fashion problems.

The Counting Crows are my girlfriend in mom jeans.

I know everything that's wrong with the band. Seriously, I do. I realize a lot of my friends don't get my intense love for their music. In spite of all of their flaws and foibles, though, they are a band that followed me through my twenties and served as a soundtrack for a lot of the high points and low points of my life. So, I love them and there's nothing you can say that will change my mind.

It's because of this intense love that I kept putting off listening to their new album Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings.

See, I'm a big believer in leaving people wanting more; knowing when to get off the stage. Hard Candy, the band's previous studio album, was a great time to get off the stage. It was a good album, but was begining to show signs of the bands eventual descent into self parody.

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is a runaway train down that hill.

The album is cut into two pieces musically and thematically. It is, in lead singer Adam Duritz' words, "the story of what happens when all the bright lights start to burn instead of glitter and you become more of a part of the shadow they cast behind you than the person you are in front." And, "It's about a flood of sin and liquor and dissolution and insanity and it's about trying to rebuild the life you wrecked in the wake of that flood. It's about the way it feels. It's about me."

Duritz has been struggling with fame and the price it demands on people for over a decade and a half now. I don't begrudge the man his struggles, lord knows I've got my own, but I don't need another album from him about it. What originally felt like a guy making a bold statement about wanting something that he knew would ultimately screw him up on the band's first album, fifteen years ago, now feels like your dad, drunk off his ass and telling your friends stories about how bad his life is.

All the old tropes are pulled out for this album. "You Can't Count On Me" revisits the classic Duritz theme of being completely unreliable,"Los Angeles" has him once again running away from a girl to go find himself, and "Almost Any Sunday Morning" revels once again in his tendency towards self-destruction.

This beating of dead horses is made worse by the fact that musically, the band doesn't seem to have really grown any. It's not a bad album musically, on the contrary, it's really well performed. The Counting Crows have all the polish and precision of a really good studio band. There's simply nothing innovative about what they're doing.

Nowhere are the sins of this album more prevelant than in the song "I Dream of Michelangelo." When my fiancee heard it for the first time she actually thought they were covering one of their own songs.

In reality the song appears to be a knowing sequel to "Angels of the Silences" from their Recovering the Sattelites album. Recurring lyrics and themes are nothing new for Counting Crows. Sometimes it seems like Duritz writes songs using a mad-libs book, going through writing words like "California," "angels," "believe," and "lonely" in the empty spaces. This song, though, is such an obvious throw back to an earlier time that it leaves the listener feeling a bit awkward. Like your drunk dad stopped telling your friends how bad his life is, but went and put on some of his clothes from high school and is now walking around the living room.

Maybe everything I've written here says more about me than it does the Counting Crows' new album. Maybe I've just come to the point where I can't appreciate the band anymore and I'm blaming them for it. Maybe I've just seen the movie one too many times and I should just shut up and let other people enjoy it. Maybe I just miss the way the band used to make me feel.

Maybe not as much as Adam Duritz does, though, it seems.

Labels: playlist

Should I....no...I'm not going to say anything....see, I'm maturing....wait,

John Mayer Rulz!

No, I'm not...sorry.  


I could not have put this better. My obsession with Counting Crows during my formitive years is putting it lightly. I still own a huge collection of bootlegs as well as limeted edition CD's from their web site and a signed copy of this desert life. I could tell you anything you ever wanted to know about the band and yet as of the last couple years I'm just not feeling it anymore.

This is not a bad album by any means but for whatever reason the magic is gone... I can't say why exactly. Might be differant if this album had been released 3 years ago like it should have been. I also perhaps have my more recent love of indie music to blame.

Menomena's last album completely threw me for a loop and for the first time in over 15 years I found myself being obsessed with a band more than you could immagine. I can't explain this logicaly. Maybe it also has something to do with David Bazan sliping in to ocupy that mopp-rock genre previously held by Adam Duritz in conjuntion with my decent into "indie snobery" and a bias against major releases.

I just saw Counting Crows live a few mouths ago and their live show is just as good as ever.... but I felt a strage disconnect being in a huge ampitheater to see a band which is now seems "larger than life" compared to the realitive poverty yet authenticity of indie bands most of which will never drive in with multiple trucks, plush vans and dozens of stage support crew. Their sheer magnetude of professionalism threw me. For example a mandoin string had broke on stage and instantly a replacement instrament was provided before most people even had a chance to notice the transition.

Contrast this to the fact that I had just seen The National (who are every bit as amazing) the previous night in the same venue that I had once saw a Counting Crows show in.  


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