Counting Crows are back

Over at I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, they've got a couple of mp3s from the new Counting Crows album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, out March 25.
And... I'm not that impressed. The faster track, "1492," dates to at least 2000, and possibly as far back as 1997. The softer song, "When I Dream of Michaelangelo," deliberately echoes a 1996 hit, "Angels of the Silences."

Make no mistake, this is almost surely Counting Crows' last shot at being a big-time mainstream band, and not a cult nostalgia act. Their last big hit was almost four years ago and was a goofy, out-of-character pop song from a Shrek soundtrack. The hit before that was a Joni Mitchell cover with Vanessa Carlton, from 2003. To find the last time a real, sounds-like-Counting-Crows song was all over radio, you have to go back to 1999 and "Hangin' Around."

Now they still have a fanbase: they did a tour of minor-league baseball stadiums last summer with Live and Collective Soul (here's "Hangin' Around" from Tulsa with Graham Colton helping out:)


When you consider every one of their original albums has hit the Billboard Top 10, and a live album released last June managed to land at #52, maybe they'll be OK. Or maybe that's a sign that, like REM, Pearl Jam, or Tori Amos, they've got a fanbase who will buy anything the first week. Look at their sales figures:
1994: August and Everything After - 7x platinum
1996: Recovering the Satellites - double-platinum
1998: Across a Wire: Live in New York - platinum
1999: This Desert Life - platinum
2002: Hard Candy - gold
2004: Films about Ghosts (best of) - gold

Now consider that their live performances in the last few years can charitably be called erratic (I personally witnessed Adam Duritz have some sort of on-stage breakdown during a show in Atlanta in the summer of 2005, and have heard other stories), the long layoff and the fact that many of the hardcore fans were turned off by the Joni Mitchell cover and the Shrek song. And this might not turn out so well.

Now, supposedly Duritz has dropped 50 pounds and conquered his demons, and the band is ready to retake their spot atop the pantheon. I hope it happens. When they were at their best, they were a great band. Maybe they can be again.