CD Odyssey Disc 610: Counting Crows

If I’m addicted to music (and I think it likely) then I’ve had a bad week. I bought three albums over the weekend and yesterday I bought two more (an LL Cool J record and a Salt N Pepa record).

As addictions go, it isn’t a bad one, mind you. Music is good for the soul – I’m not sure there’s anything better for it.

Disc 610 is….August and Everything After

Artist: Counting Crows

Year of Release: 1993

What’s up with the Cover? Someone’s very ugly and awkward penmanship, made even harder to read by the printing of a bunch of song lyrics in the background in the same bad handwriting. My handwriting is atrocious – probably the worst I know – but at least I’d know better than to decorate my album cover with it.

How I Came To Know It: This is one of Sheila’s albums – I think she owned it when I met her. She has played it so many times she knows it like the back of her hand, but I’ve only heard it a few times, usually when she puts it on while we’re playing board games.

How It Stacks Up:  We have three counting crows albums.  Before I started listening to this one, I would have guessed my favourite was “Hard Candy” (reviewed back at Disc 331) but now that I’ve given them all a careful ear, I must admit that “August and Everything After” is the best.

And since this is the last Counting Crows album in the collection, here’s a recap:

1. August and Everything After: 4 stars (reviewed right here)
2. Hard Candy: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 331)
3. Self-Titled: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 477)

Rating:  4 stars

When I rolled this album, my first reaction was disappointment. Not Barry Manilow level disappointment, mind you, but disappointment all the same. After a couple of listens, I am pleased to announce that my initial reaction was very mistaken and that despite all the bitching and moaning on this downer of a record, it is actually a pretty fine album.

Let’s get what I hate about this record out of the way first, so we can mirror my listening experience by ending on an up note.  I’ve hated the song “Mr. Jones” for years. I hate its frantic, directionless riff. I hate the way they try to break it down in the middle and try to make it artsy. I hate the way it starts with Adam Duritz going “la la la la” over and over again like a demented out-of-control toddler at a supermarket. Most of all I hate how overplayed it was. Unlike “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” no amount of time will ever rehabilitate “Mr. Jones” from all the overexposure it received because it just wasn’t any damned good to begin with.

OK, now that this is out of my system, I can turn the rest of this review to what I like about this album, which is quite a lot.

First off, Adam Duritz’ voice, which is used to good effect here. In previous reviews I’ve characterized it as “self-absorbed” and “overwrought” but it avoids both pitfalls here. On “August and Everything After” his voice is powerful and emotionally provocative, framed – but never caged – by his innate gift with phrasing. It is hard to tell if he’s connecting better to the material, or if it is just that the material is so much better. It is likely a bit of both.

The band is best at its quietest, particularly on songs like “Omaha” which I think is both a tribute and an indictment of Middle America wrapped up in one song. “Perfect Blue Buildings” is also a pretty song, with a muted groove to it. I’m not 100 per cent certain what “Perfect Blue Buildings” is about – I think addiction and homelessness. Certainly it is about hopelessness, and the inner demons everyone carries within them to one degree or another. Some people just got it worse. As the narrator notes:

“I got bones beneath my skin, and mister…

There’s a skeleton in every man’s house

Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody

There’s a dead man trying to get out.

Please help me stay awake, I’m falling…

“Asleep in perfect blue buildings

Beside the green apple sea

Gonna get me a little oblivion baby

Try to keep myself away from me.”

As these sad and fatal lyrics wrap up the song, a mandolin comes out noticeably in the mix, adding just the right amount of poignancy to the previously bass-driven tune.

The album is a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride, but it has the right amount of peaks and valleys to work and rarely feels artificial or over-done. The exception is Duritz repeating the line “I really need a raincoat” on “Raining In Baltimore” – that is very badly over-done but it is the exception to the rule, so I’m willing to look the other way.

Production-wise, the record has that layered, busy sound that was very popular in the early nineties. I don’t love that production approach, and think it would benefit in places from a sparser arrangement. However, it works well overall, drawing the nuances out of all the various instruments, and letting them compete individually for their moments with good effect.

The album spawned four top ten hits, yet none of those songs are the best tracks. For all their ability to spawn a pop melody and catch the fleeting audience of radio, “Counting Crows” are at their best when they are quiet and introspective; drawing you in and daring you to pay attention. “August and Everything After” does exactly this, and it is easy to see why it is one of Sheila’s favourite albums. It is deeply emotional, lyrically interesting. Like any good album the more you get to know it, the more you appreciate it.

Sheila said she would give it five stars. I would ordinarily give it three, holding it back one star just because of “Mr. Jones.” However, I’ll be damned if I’ll give that song the satisfaction of pulling the rating down; it doesn’t deserve to matter that much on a record that is otherwise so thoughtful and interesting. Four stars it is.

Best tracks:  Omaha, Perfect Blue Buildings, Anna Begins, Time and Time Again, Sullivan Street