Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It: The Counting Crows

This feature is the equivalent of those items on social media. The ones where you can only pick one artist to see live or listen to one album forever. They always include Queen, Bowie and Prince, whereas here at AUK, it could be Isbell, Williams and Earle. Difficult choices and a relief it is all just hypothetical.

The Counting Crows were my band of choice in the early noughties. I travelled over to the United States, armed with my innovative CD player that read MP3 files, and loaded it with as much Crow’s music as I could fit on an 800 MB disc. When it comes to choosing which album I can’t live with and then the one that I absolutely can’t live without, I thought it would be easy. Looking back at my life with the Counting Crows, there is a clear leader… or is there?

Formed in the San Francisco Bay Area back in 1991, when singer Adam Duritz and guitarist David Bryson became a duo mainly playing around the local area. David Immergluck joined, bringing along his mandolin, giving the Crows their distinctive sound. Not a prolific band, their catalogue includes only eight studio albums with five live albums spanning from 1998 to 2013. For this, I have discounted the latest album, “Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!” as it is too early to pass judgment as to whether it is one I can’t live with.

Can’t Live With It: “Underwater Sunshine (or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation)” (2010)

This is an album of cover versions which Counting Crows are renowned for throwing into their sets. On the UK “Hard Candy” tour, they transitioned from ‘Round Here‘ into Van Morrison’s ‘Sweet Thing,’ and it was incredible. On the UK version of the “Hard Candy” LP, they included a very credible version of Bob Dylan’s ‘You Ain’t Going Nowhere’ made famous by The Byrds. As a hidden track, the same CD included the fantastic cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. Lauded by fans and critics alike, it was released as a single featuring Vanessa Carlton on backing vocals and achieved reasonable chart success worldwide.

So why am I happy to put this one in the charity bin and wave it goodbye? People play and record other people’s songs all the time. Heck, UB40 have made a career out of it. Our very own AUK writer and broadcaster, Keith Hargreaves, had a section on his radio show, “Sounds From Beyond The Shed”, on Mixcloud, playing exquisite covers and other efforts that should never have been recorded. None of the songs on this album would make the latter section, and I would even go as far as to say that a couple may make the first. Overall, though, “Underwater Sunshine” drowned out its sunlit moments, and it clouded over.

What you look for in a cover version is something special. An element that wasn’t in the original song. Too many in this collection canter through the songs without adding anything to them. For example, there is a version of ‘Coming Around’, the Travis-penned song that made number 5 for them in the UK charts back in June 2000. The Counting Crows’ interpretation adds nothing to the superior original. ‘Untitled (Love Song)’, originally by the band The Romany Rye, is vocally better than the original, and Duritz does a good job of carrying the song through and making it his own and is the one ray of sunshine reaching the sea bed. Their version of Richard Thompson’s ‘Meet Me on the Ledge’ takes all the folk out of the song and never reaches the highest windowsill that Fairport Convention managed in 1968.

One thing the album does is pique your curiosity about the originals, leading to a path of discovery that can introduce you to an interesting artist. Again, one of the reasons why acts decide to try these cover albums. They have so many favourite songs and influences that there comes a time when they feel fans would be appreciative. ‘Like Teenage Gravity’ is one of those songs. The Counting Crows produce a likeable version of the Kasey Anderson song, opening another branch of the Americana tree. The song is included on Anderson’s 2009 album “Nowhere Nights”, which is worth tracking down.

All in all, there is nothing drastic about any of the covers on “Underground Sunshine”; however, there isn’t anything that will change your life or view of the originals.

Can’t Live Without It: “August and Everything After: Live at Town Hall” (2011)

You could say I cheated on this one. “August and Everything After” is my favourite studio album by the Counting Crows; however, it is run a close second by the excellent “Somewhere Under Wonderland”. The first track, ‘Palisades Park’, which Duritz has said is one of the best things he has ever written, is also one of the most engaging opening tracks of an album anywhere. My affection for what I consider their “return to form” album after the patchy “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings” nearly took this into my Can’t Live Without top spot.

“August and Everything After: Live at Town Hall” was recorded in New York on September 18^th, 2007, but didn’t get released until almost four years later on the Eagle Rock label. After all I said about cover versions above, this record includes a host of cameo ones, and they are brilliant. I know people who dislike live albums where the band alter the original, one that introduces different verses or lines of dialogue. Personally, for me, that is what makes a stunning live album, and the Counting Crows have done it here.

The set is a complete run through their first release, and right from those opening bars of ‘Round Here’, we are on a journey of discovery. It is like, after almost fourteen years to the day after its original release, the band have finally worked out what these songs should sound like.

Listening to this album is like connecting with an old friend. One who has been through some changes and challenges and has come back even stronger. The opener ‘Round Here’ is over eleven minutes long and drifts seamlessly into ‘Raining in Baltimore’ and back out again. When Duritz gets to the line “I need to hear a little guitar”, Dan Vickery is right on cue with a grinding guitar sound that is simply breathtaking. Duritz and the band must have been listening to a lot of Sordid Humor stuff as they shoehorn a section of ‘Private Archipelago’ into the suite, also using a section of ‘Doris Day’ later on during the closing track ‘A Murder of One’, both of which come out of the blue.

Nine minutes of the single ‘Rain King’ is just mind-blowing. Previously, the band had been playing a slow, acoustic version. The return of the up-tempo incarnation with Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Thunder  Road’ fitting perfectly into the narrative. These guys can do gorgeous cover versions, after all.

The concert concludes with ‘A Murder of One’. Somehow, Duritz squeezes in some of the words from U2’s ‘Red Hill Mining Town’. My personal favourite from “The Joshua Tree“, so they were onto a winner. Then we get a second nod to Sordid Humor with extracts of the aforementioned ‘Doris Day,’ which sounds crazy when you first hear it.

There it is; I can’t live without this album. It evokes memories of seeing the band live and the unpredictability of where they will take us on any given night. All this without mentioning the fabulous ‘Mr. Jones’, the sublime ‘Omaha’ and Duritz’s favourite ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’. If you are a fan of the Counting Crows, you will love “August and Everything After”, so give the Town Hall Live version a try if you haven’t already. Best live album ever; now there’s an idea for our Essentials feature.