Current Events > I don't get the Counting Crows.

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Theyre supposed to be this super deep thinking mans band but I only hear generic radio Rock.

lejonbrames posted...

Theyre supposed to be this super deep thinking mans band

Whoever told you that lied

I wonder how many crows they've counted now. Surely they must be nearly finished?

I like them a lot, they've got some really good songs and lyrics.

lejonbrames posted...

Theyre supposed to be this super deep thinking mans band but I only hear generic radio Rock.

yeah they've always been generic radio rock

I always think people are talking about the Black Crowes and I always come in ready to raise hell then realize I have the wrong band

I don't care how deep the thought is, as long as it's good music

They never counted and they aren't even crows

The Killers are the thinking man's band

The lead singer is such a douchebag. They wrote that dumb incoherent song Mr. Jones (which is somehow about a person becoming famous or never being famous, one of the two, despite the lyrics being complete nonsense) and got offended when it made them famous. Like ohhhh nooo, you poor, rich, mediocre musician hipster.

They literally did a song for Shrek

Is this a case of "you gotta listen to their non-single songs"?

Counting Crows is dad rock. They were a college draw in the 90's, they made waves in like alternative music or something before Hard Candy came out in the 2000's which was their most commercially viable record to date - that's where Big Yellow Taxi came from, and it was just before they did Accidentally in Love for Shrek 2.

Then they tried to make two albums, one of them more of a rock direction with electric guitar and stuff, the other softer and acoustic. They ended up making half of each album, and they put out a single record called Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. This was partially because of Adam Duritz's mental issues - he suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, and at one point he was a shut-in.

After that album came out, the band became more of a live thing - they began hosting the Outlaw Roadshow, this big country/folk music festival, and they went independent. Their first indie record was called Underwater Sunshine, and it was a cover album of older country/folky sort of tracks. Meet on the Ledge, Amie, Return of the Grievous Angel etc. This was a direction they were definitely steeped in for a while, even their third album This Desert Life was more of a folky vibe with a desert twang, but Underwater Sunshine was the whole kit and kaboodle.

Then their last album for like 7 years was called Somewhere Under Wonderland, and it came with a bunch of music videos with a linked narrative. I didn't like it a whole lot, but Tom Clark might be able to expound more on this album.

The fact of the matter is that Counting Crows had evocative, emotional lyrics, and Adam's singing came off as very fragile and vulnerable which lent a lot of weight to the music - especially in live recordings. That gave way into brief radio success, which parlayed itself into them becoming a jam band who did like extended riffing on their prior songs and Grateful Dead covers, paying homage to the older "outlaw" style of country/western and folk music the further they went along. Counting Crows has been a lot of things, you can't really pigeonhole them as "a thinking man's band" or a "jam band in the vein of the Grateful Dead". They've been both of those things at very different parts of their existence.

And on top of that, they're 28 years old as a band. People who grew up listening to them are parents now, and they fully drifted into self-indulgent long-form jam sessions and old folky country sort of music. Counting Crows are a dad rock band.

Before I finish this post, I want to bring up the project they put out last year. They put out a "suite" of music called Butter Miracle. It's four tracks, 18 minutes long, and all four songs bleed into each other. It evokes a bunch of sounds from their entire career - the more grim and melancholy sounds of August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites, the more twangy country-rock vibe of This Desert Life and like Somewhere Under Wonderland, the more dramatic emotional tracks from Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings and a really great radio rock riff ala the Boomtown Rats. It's probably their best new music in ten years.