It is unfair at this point to judge the Counting Crows against the standard of August and Everything After. To hope for another "Mr. Jones," "Round Here," or "Omaha" would be an unreasonable expectation. They are a different band now - far different from the one that hit the scene in the early '90s with edgy and angst-driven riffs and lyrics that were like nothing else on the radio.
The band's fifth studio album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, is a dual-disc release, with two different producers: Gil Norton on Saturday Nights and Brian Deck on Sunday Mornings. The music on each disc, as one could imagine, reflects their respective themes. Saturday Nights is reminiscent of some of the heavier songs off Recovering the Satellites and Hard Candy, but without the lyrical sustenance or memorable guitar riffs, while Sunday Mornings takes the listener back to Across a Wire: Live in New York City and VH1 Storytellers with a heavy dose of acoustic guitar.
Arranged as such, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings allows the band to work on both ends of their creative spectrum, both musically and lyrically. There are moments, however, where lead singer Adam Duritz and the band feel confined within the parameters they set for themselves. Duritz finds himself on Saturday Nights trying too hard to come across as a wild and crazy guy. On "1492" he boasts, "I guess I bought a gun / Because it impresses all the little girls I see / And then they all wanna sleep with me." Duritz's carefully crafted lyrics are interrupted by instances of sheer goofiness.
Duritz's playfulness first emerged on This Desert Life in songs like "Hangin' Around," "Mr. Robinson In His Cadillac Dreams," and the album's closing bonus track. He soon resurrected it again in his song "Accidentally in Love" for the Shrek 2 soundtrack. Whereas in these songs Duritz's carefree attitude and swagger is coupled by equally upbeat music, on Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings his playfulness turns from innovative to destructive and obnoxious. "Los Angeles," the most noteworthy song off Saturday Nights with its contagious refrain and memorable country guitar riffs, ends with the lyric, "And man it's a really good place to find yourself a taco" - lyrics that completely take the listener out of an otherwise great song. Duritz attributes this abrupt ending to the fact that he was a little drunk during its recording.
On iTunes, the album comes with a track-by-track interview with Duritz. For die-hard Counting Crows fans, this is a great bonus, but for anyone else, the interview feels forced and contrived, especially when Duritz talks about how his grappling with fame created a lot of the inspiration for this album.
"I had found that I was living a life in which all my dreams had come true and I had still somehow missed the mark. I was still falling down a hole and taking a lot of people down with me," he says about the album and its first track, "1492," a song in which Duritz creates Christopher Columbus imagery in an effort to express how it feels to strive for something great and then live with its adverse repercussions. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is laced with such instances, where Duritz's lyrics and analogies not only fail to make sense but are also just plain silly.
The real gems in this release are found on Sunday Mornings. Though certainly more toned-down than other Counting Crows' efforts, the tracks on Sunday Morning bring out the best in Duritz. "When I Dream of Michelangelo" and the album's first single, "You Can't Count on Me," will remind fans of why they listen to the band. "Le Ballet d'Or" walks the line, or rather the wire, between acoustic versions of "Have You Seen Me Lately" and "Catapult."
After making fans wait six years for a new album, the 16-track Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a warm welcome. Not without its faults - its ill attempts to reach the voice and sounds that originally threw them into the limelight - the album recovers and overcomes these pitfalls like a Sunday sunrise in a clear sky after a gloomy Saturday night. B
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