Counting Crows Return Strong With New Disc Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Don't listen to the critics. Most musicians will tell you it's the biggest rule they live by, and Counting Crows' frontman Adam Duritz is no exception to it. Ever since the Crows hit the public consciousness in 1993 with breakout single "Mr. Jones" and the highest-selling rock debut album ever in August and Everything After, the dreadlocked singer/songwriter has gone about things his own way, from dating a steady stream of celebs (Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Mary-Louise Parker, Nicole Kidman, to name a few) to his physical appearance (honestly, how many 38-year-old white boys do you know with nappy dreads? . . . Exactly.) Now, after an almost six year hiatus, Duritz and his Crows are back on the map with their fifth studio album proper, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings.

It's always been easy comparing Counting Crows to their influences: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, the Beatles . . . All good places to go for inspiration, and yet the synthesized blend of those sounds is what makes the Crows entirely unique. Which is to say, they sound like themsleves. Here, over the course of fourteen songs, Duritz runs the gamut from love, lust and self-indulgence to remorse, regret and heartache. The new Crows' release is an interesting concept in that it's really two albums squished into one: the six songs on Saturday Nights are produced by Gil Norton (the same producer behind the band's hardest rocking album to date, 1996's sophomore effort Recovering the Satellites) while the tracks on Sunday Mornings are produced by long-time Modest Mouse man Brian Deck.

Most reviewers of the album will call Saturdays the "rock 'n roll half" and Sundays the "country side." It's not entirely that simple, especially given rocker "Come Around" at the end of side two, but the general description does give a pretty good idea of the tempo of the songs on each half-album. What's clear as well is that the Counting Crows have grown in size and sound: the band now has seven full-fledged members, all who are versatile enough musically that you can hear any of dozens of instruments being played on every track.

It starts off with "1492", an up-tempo jammer about reveling in the excess of celebrity, with apropos Christopher Columbus references to boot. "I'm Russian-Jew American/ Impersonating African-Jamaican" Duritz shouts autobiographically in the album's opening couplet. The song was originally intended for 2002's Hard Candy, but the band couldn't agree on a definitive version. Here it sounds complete. What the tune is about, as a whole, I'm not entirely sure, but it's nonetheless sonically powerful with a loud rollicking guitar solo front and center stage two minutes in.

The urgency continues with "Hanging Tree." Another pretty melody riding high on guitars, it has Duritz singing "This dizzy life of mine/Keeps hanging me up all the time/This dizzy life of mine is just a hanging tree." Seriously dark subject matter for a nice piece of pop. "Los Angeles" continues the pop life with Duritz getting a little too comfortable writing about his celebrity dating lifestyle. Co-written by Ryan Adams, it's the slowest of the six songs on the first half of the album. Along with "Insignificant", it's nice enough to listen to, but looms as one of the album's overall lightweights.

But all is far from lost. "Sundays" is another quality rocker that has been sitting in the Crows' unreleased vault for a long time. Ten years to be exact; it was first recorded for 1999's This Desert Life, but didn't make a disc till now. It's Duritz at his most nihilistic, singing "I don't believe in Sundays/I don't believe in anything at all." Fuzzy guitar dominates sex-driven lyrics.

Then there's "Cowboys." As the closer for Saturday Mornings, it goes for the heart, sounding downright uncomfortable at times. Duritz paints the picture of a world where no one is safe from anything, including themselves. Cowboys, thieves, presidents and nobodies make their way in and out of focus, some more damaged than others. It does an impressive job of wrapping the half-album's themes in a closing statement and makes for a single transfixing five minute plus cut. Talented lead guitarist Dan Vickrey is splashed all over again, not allowed to hit a crescendo until the burner's closing moments.

"Washington Square" opens Sunday Mornings in a contemplative mood. The lyrics make for a beautiful poem about life and Lower Manhattan, while Duritz's piano arrives soft and refreshing, rendering its absence from the first half of the album all the more apparent. (If there's a basic criticism one can make of the two albums-in-one idea the Crows are going for here, it's that by dividing the disc's pacing into two direct halves, it eliminates some of the cut-by-cut tempo anticipation after the first listen . . . Maybe I'm just nitpicking though.) Other second side highlights include the beautifully piano-laden "On Almost Any Sunday Morning", catchy lead single "You Can't Count On Me" and biting closer "Come Around."

With six years between this Counting Crows' release and the last, it's hard to know when---or if---singer/songwriter Adam Duritz will be able to come up with enough stuff for a sixth album, but that's all right. If this is their final statement, it's an altogether appropriate last chapter for a group that did things its own way, becoming one of the most popular American rock bands of the past twenty years. High quality rock music with lyrical gut punches written all over it, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is undoubtedly more hits than misses.

-JAB

Josh's Album Rating: * * * * (4 stars out of 5)