I Wanted to See You Walking Backwards and Get the Sensation of You Coming Home

(Counting Crows, Time and Time Again)

After a week of listening to the new Counting Crows album, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings (buy it on Amazon), I think I'm ready to make my thoughts public. I realize I might have been a bit harsh on R.E.M., after only one day's worth of listening, and I wanted to be a bit more even-keeled for this one. Counting Crows, at one point, were also my favorite band, and still occupy a special place in my heart and mind. They were my primary soundtrack for the summer of 1999, which I spent in Israel as a counselor for 40 or so 16-year old kids, who really were a great group to be around. That's also when I became friends with Dave and Wendi, and over the years, the three of us have spent a great deal of time listening to and talking about the Crows, and calling each other from their concerts. Somehow, Dave even ended up backstage last year. That's him in the blue, trying not to let Adam Duritz's sweat drip on him.


Though the Crows aren't my favorite anymore, Amanda says they're still her favorites. She's seen them more often than I have, which means more than twice. We saw them together in LA, and it was an awesome show, much better than I thought it would be, because they mainly stuck to the meat of their first two albums, which stack up against anybody's. August and Everything After is as good of a debut album as it gets, and is probably in my top ten favorite albums of my generation. Recovering the Satellites was a great follow-up, and although This Desert Life and Hard Candy had some good songs on them, they weren't really up to par when measured against those first two.

It's hard to believe that Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is only their fifth studio album. The problem is, I can't be totally objective about it. I can try, but I won't really get there, not completely. I even decided years ago that if I had a daughter, I wanted to name her Elizabeth, after Goodnight Elizabeth, but Amanda put the kibosh on that idea (though I'm still holding on in the hopes that I can wear her down by the time we have kids). I guess I just have too much of a sentimental connection to their music, but isn't that what music's all about, for the most part?

The bottom line is, I really like this album. I really like it. And I really like it for some of the same reasons that Amanda is disappointed by it. Part of what I love about their music (primarily August and Satellites) is their imagery. They repeatedly refer to the same places, the same girls, the same dreams of Michelangelo, which gives their music a common thread and keeps it all tied together and interrelated. To me, that's awesome. And they'd sort of gone away from that in their later work, but on Saturday Nights, they've brought that aspect back into the fold, and I couldn't be happier. Amanda thinks that's lazy of them, to rely on old names and phrases instead of thinking of new material, which I guess is valid, but since that's one of my favorite aspects of their music, it's not a position I hold. To each his (her) own.

I will freely admit that it's not 100% a great album. In fact, some of the songs are downright terrible, but strangely enough, even thinking that sort of makes me happy. I do like the fact that they put the terrible songs at the very beginning of the album, which is ballsy, but we get them out of the way early. 1492 is just too hard and disjointed. It's this album's Children in Bloom (which, over time, I have come to enjoy as well). Hanging Tree and Sundays are both almost good songs, they're just not quite there. Maybe a little too much like Hanging Around, or maybe a little too Shrek-esque. I do like Los Angeles, though. Great song, and it really is a good place to find yourself a taco. I also enjoy Insignificant a lot. And once we get into the middle of the album, the tempo slows a bit and the warmth of their imagery just sort of washes over you. I know, that sounds pretty cheesy. I told you I couldn't be objective, remember?

The highlights of the album are all in the second half. Washington Square is a great song, and is already one of my favorites in their catalog. It's this album's answer to Sullivan Street, just a great conflicted song about home, which you have to take for its good and its bad. When I Dream of Michelangelo is another one that belongs up there with Round Here and, naturally, Angels of the Silences. And, just to prove that it's not only the slow songs that jump out at me, I absolutely love the bonus track Sessions, which is an awesome bluesy rock song about psychiatry and prescription mood-altering medication.

I love that this album is a return to what made their first few albums great. To me, that's worth the sacrifice of "new" material, and it also makes the wait since their last album worthwhile. Listening to this album takes me back 10, 15 years. For an hour and 20 minutes, that's just fine with me.