I’ve taken countless unmerciful lashings from friends over the years for my admittedly odd and rather embarrassing support of the Adam Duritz-led Counting Crows—call it the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, and this is coming from a guy who still sometimes puts on a Gin Blossoms record. (In truth, while I could forever argue the merits of the band’s first two records, “August and Everything After” and “Recovering the Satellites,” the next two were aggressively horrible.) This year’s Counting Crows output, the band’s fifth proper record, “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings,” finds the band back in non-generic, “Satellites” territory, and it works well. With the help of producers Gil Norton (Pixies) and Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse), the band, literally, crafts a night-and-day collection—the first half of the record is wholly loud, meaty rock ‘n’ roll tracks, the second half sparse, mostly acoustic numbers. (Norton produced the harder half, Deck the softer.) It’s the band’s best output in more than a decade, easily. There’s been a recent, slow underground build-up of recognition for Counting Crows, mostly in the teeny emo scene—with even the most remote amount of thought, one can see the attraction. (Tom Lynch)
Cool Aid: A Review of Situation Chicago 2 The album does an outstanding job of bringing home the staggering sonic and stylistic range we deny ourselves when we return too often to the same genre well.
