Counting Crows - Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Phrases such as “Your previous record was so much better” or even worse “Your very first record made a lot more sense” has become a cliché, but many bands are suffering from hearing these phrases over and over. Take Pearl Jam and Green Day as instances. No Pearl Jam album will ever become another Ten and no other Green Day album could overcome their 1994’s Dookie, American Idiot might have sold so much better but it will never be another Dookie! And I think Counting Crows are suffering from the very thing. “August And Everything After, man! That was the best.” I just don’t know how many times Adam Duritz and his friends have just heard this. Well, August and Everything After was genuinely a great pop-rock effort with a super-hit like “Mr. Jones” and a couple of other great songs. They returned with a more up-beat rock ‘n roll noisy thing called Recovering the Satellites in 1996 which was probably a successful one as well but I don’t know! (lol) and then came Hard Candy, a full pop experience for the band. I personally could not relate to any of these two items but I’m still occasionally listening to their Oscar nominee soundtrack for Shrek movie “Accidentally In Love”, a true lovely track. And now, the Crows return with a five year suspense with Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings and according to Adam Durits:

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is 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. Produced in two parts by Gil Norton & Brian Deck, 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.
It's a Counting Crows album. We're back. We were only ever as far gone as you can go.

Ok! And what’s wrong with that? The album title is pretty neat and as it explains the album is divided in two different sections like two sides of a cassette with Bon Jovi performing 6 tracks on side A and 8 mellower tracks out of U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind on side B. “Saturday Nights” part refer to the first 6 tracks from the opener “1492” to “Cowboys”. These six tracks have a more Recovering the Satellites taste and present Counting Crows’ rock ‘n roll side, and “Sunday Mornings” bring you their August and Everything After side but without a hit like “Mr. Jones” or “Omaha”. But in one overall glance at this 14 tracks album, I don’t see anything weak. This is Counting Crows’ signature music as it always was and it becomes better by repeated listening. Well of course Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings will not satisfy those involved too much in indie music (including myself and all those Pitchfork readers) but Adam Duritz still has his beautiful artistic taste for cities and painters as he still mentions their names (Los Angeles, Washington, Amsterdam, Michelangelo, etc) and brings them all into his melodic passionate baritone voice Duritz-style. His own voice has signature and we’re all well aware of that. This can be a lovely album for all Counting Crows fans and they were truly as far gone as you can go.