A Beautiful Murder

Counting Crows - Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Ever since I first heard Mr Jones, the debut single from Counting Crows way back in 1985 I've been a huge fan of the band. There's something about singer and main songwriter Adam Duritz's impassioned and tortured lyrics that, in common with Trent Reznor, really seem to speak to me and understand what goes on in this head and heart of mine.

It seems like an eternity since the Crows last album, Hard Candy, hit the shelves some six years ago, but with their new offering, Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, the wait has most definitely been worth it.

Flying in the face of their record company's wishes, Duritz stuck to his vision of a record that is for all intents and purposes actually two short albums that perfectly complement each other.

The first six tracks, the Saturday Night of the equation are up tempo rock songs, packing more emotion and musical hooks into thirty minutes than some bands manage in their entire careers. Opener 1492 powers along like a freight train, and has a rough around the edges feel that I've witnessed live with the band on occasion, but which has never been captured successfully on record until now.

The following five tracks are simultaneously fresh slices of Counting Crows' trademark sound while also managing to sound as though each of them are refugees from their various previous records, particularly Hanging Tree which could have sat very easily among the songs on This Desert Life, and contains one of Duritz's finest examples of the raw emotion he infuses his lyrics as he sings "You open windows, And you wait for someone warm to come inside, And then you freeze to death alone."

As Saturday Night's closing tune Cowboys comes to an abrupt end, the more sublime Sunday Mornings side of the album gently arrives in the form of Washington Square, a sparse but devastatingly lonely song that will stop hearts in the live arena.

Having stated in an interview that he approached the writing of this record as if it were to be the band's swansong (though he stresses this isn't the case), Duritz clverly recycles moments from their debut album August And Everything After with the line "I dream of Michelangelo when I'm lying in my bed" in the short but poignant When I Dream Of Michelangelo, reprising the line from the first album's Mr Jones.

Having confessed that he's spent the last few years falling apart, Duritz is at his most beautifully vulnerable in songs like Anyone But You and You Can't Count On Me (which the record company lobbied unsuccessfully to change to the more positive You CAN Count On Me), and even ends his liner notes with another reprise, this time from Recovering The Satellites' haunting A Long December by musing that "maybe this year WILL be better than the last."

There are very few singer/songwriters who wear their emotions so nakedly on their sleeves as Duritz does, but in doing so once more he has created an album that any Counting Crows fan will instantly take to their heart, and which will remain relevant and engaging for years to come.

A literal record of two halves, and one that this murder of Crows can be extremely proud of.

The Song Remains

Things come and go, people arrive and depart, sometimes staying for a few brief moments, sometimes for a lifetime.

One thing that always remains are the songs.

I'm sitting listening to August And Everything After by Counting Crows and I'm reminded once again just why this is one of my favourite records. Ever.

It fills my head with images, and memories, and desires. It gives me hope, it makes me despair, the music lifts my soul and the words break my heart because I understand them completely.

Since coming into my life thirteen years ago, Adam Duritz's lyrics have reached into my soul and ripped out my very being, holding it up in front of me, broken and bleeding for me to regard, to consider, to refelct on and ultimately to heal.

There's nothing so powerful as a song that is you, and so many of the Counting Crows songs seem to tell my story, even though I've never been to some of the places, or met some of the people, but still, they're me.

Duritz sings of love, of loss, of walking the fine tightrope that is sanity and of occasionally falling from it. He yearns for solitude and peace, and yet craves company and understanding. He sings pain, he sings joy, he sings from the heart and he sings me.

And I listen, and learn, and empathise, and remember and try to forget and re-live fragments of a life that isn't my own but could be.

If there is something beyond this life that we struggle through, then I have but one wish, that I can take the songs with me. For they are me, and I am them, and as long as I have them then I am never alone.


"We couldn't all be cowboys
So some of us are clowns
Some of us are dancers on the midway
We roam from town to town
I hope that everybody can find a little flame
Me, I say my prayers, then I just light myself on fire
And I walk out on the wire once again"

Counting Crows - Goodnight Elisabeth