Has there ever been a band to so delicately tip-toe and pirouette along the line between unforgiveably naff and somewhat cool as Counting Crows? Picture when they first appeared in the early 1990s with 'Mr Jones', a decent pop song but with a video that made them look as cool as a still-warm freshly-dead rat; the horrific evidence can be seen here. I remember being vaguely aware of them when they sauntered onto the so-called scene, but they first made an impression anonymously by hearing their album unbenownst to themselves and myself in a bar, and asking after being impressed who it was, to be told it was Counting Crows. I still remember buying 'August and everything after' in HMV in Grafton Street in Dublin, on cassette, and walking along one of the side streets that led to my favoured assortment of book shops, when 'Round here' almost stopped me in my tracks and left my jaw gaping somewhat comically.
Here is the Counting Crows paradox in a nutshell:
On the con side:
1 They look crap
2 Their name is crap
3 They are a hair's breath away from being Hootie and the Blowfish or one of a million other anonymous guitar bands
But, on the pro side
1 An occasionally astonishing way with melody
2 Adam Duritz's voice
3 Repeat 1 and 2 ad infinitum
The pros win; the cons are amateurs. Their debut, the aforementioned 'August etc.', is simply one of my top 20 albums of all time. I have seen Duritz interviewed and he does not always come across particularly endearingly, but on song his voice does it for me every time, the way it just sometimes comes close to cracking like his heart is crumbling in hurricane. I heard something about him having a condition which makes empathy difficult, but his songs to me and in particular his delivery make this almost possible to comprehend. The way he sings lines like 'she has trouble acting normal – I have trouble acting normal' and (in particular) 'she's always on my mind' in 'Round here'. 'Round here' can be heard here, and a live version seen at:
Finally, 'Raining in Baltimore' with its plaintive vocals and simple piano tune is just forlorn and lovely - a live version with some of 'A long December' is below:
Live, Counting Crows seem to constantly battle between their rock and their unplugged natures (their most recent album 'Saturday night and Sunday morning' was based around the admission of this tension), and this, mixed with an apparent determination never to play the same song the same way twice, makes the versions on the acoustic side of their early live album 'Across a wire' of several of the 'August' songs well worth catching.
I will come back to their later albums later (hence the name) as all bear moments of tender beauty and musical magic and melodrama amidst the rockist noisiness, but for now just want to celebrate their undeniably impressive debut.
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