Counting Crows shouldn’t work.<\/p>\n
A band born in the grungy\/trendy ’90s, playing retrophile music
\nof daring integrity and artistry. A band that so frankly revolves
\naround one individual — singer\/songwriter Adam Duritz — and yet
\nbuilds rather than loses a collective musical identity over time. A
\nband that nearly drowned under the tidal wave of praise that
\nswamped their first album, then resurfaced at three-year intervals
\nwith three more albums, each both brilliant and flawed, each a
\ncourageous effort to further the band’s musical growth.<\/p>\n
It shouldn’t work, but it does.<\/p>\n
In the liner notes to this superb — yet, once again, slightly
\nflawed — collection, scribe Bill Flanagan narrates a revealing
\nanecdote. In a casual conversation about Olympic medals, Duritz
\nallowed that he’d never be satisfied with a bronze medal — he’d
\nwant the gold. After someone pointed out he was really shooting for
\nplatinum anyway, he clarified that it wasn’t about record sales. It
\nwas about “making something great.”<\/p>\n
Evidence abounds here that Duritz and the Crows have made
\nsomething great together, many times over. Sometimes the evidence
\nis in the organic yet elegant way an entire song fits together,
\nlike the furious lament “Angels Of The Silences,” the slickly
\nironic “American Girls” or the raucous slackers’ anthem
\n“Hanginaround.” And sometimes the evidence is in the details. The
\neerie arrangement and somber cadence of “Round Here.” The luminous
\ntone of the piano in “A Long December” as Duritz sings about “the
\nway that light attaches to a girl.” The bounding bass line that
\nanchors the band’s buoyant cover of Joni Mitchell’s classic “Big
\nYellow Taxi.”<\/p>\n
Or lyrics like this one, from “Anna Begins”: “She’s talking in
\nher sleep \/ It’s keeping me awake \/ and Anna begins to toss and
\nturn \/ And every word is nonsense but I understand.” Sleeplessness,
\nthe emotional gulf between men and women, and the intuitive
\nrecognition that a relationship has begun to unravel — all in a
\nbrief little quatrain from an unjustifiably obscure “pop” song.
\n(One other lyric note — this collection’s title is taken from one
\nof Duritz’ best lines, from the opening verse of “Mrs. Potter’s
\nLullaby,” a seven-minute ode to a movie-screen crush: “If dreams
\nare like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.” Simply
\nbrilliant.)<\/p>\n
As always in a “best of” situation, however, the
\nmore-than-casual fan is left second-guessing some of the track
\nselections. From
\nHard Candy<\/i>, why include the languid ballad “Holiday In
\nSpain,” one of that album’s lesser achievements, over the
\nsparkling, propulsive title track? A head-shaker, that one, though
\nstill not as puzzling as this: how do you justify including two new
\ntracks (both solid, neither a standout) while omitting what is
\narguably the Crows’ finest moment as a band, the ringing,
\ngut-wrenching conclusion to their debut album, “A Murder Of
\nOne”?<\/p>\n
The thing is, these flaws are part of what makes Counting Crows
\nsuch a special group. They remind us that neither greatness nor
\nbeauty is the same thing as perfection. By my measurement, this
\nalbum contains some of the best and most important songs of the
\nlast decade of popular music. Compared to its competition, it rates
\nan “A+” cubed. But this band isn’t competing with anyone but
\nthemselves, and if they’re not satisfied yet — if they are still
\ndriven to “create something great” — why on earth would I want to
\ncontradict them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":26683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5864],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-37938","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-counting-crows","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37938"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}