It didn’t seem to matter that the heat index was in the 100s in Raleigh, North Carolina, as Counting Crows with support from The Gaslight Anthem drew a near-capacity crowd, making a hot summer night feel even hotter. After a one-hour-plus set from the openers, Counting Crows ripped through a 17-song program that spanned their thirty-year-and-counting catalogue, from ‘Mr. Jones,’ ‘Round Here’ and ‘Omaha’ from “August and Everything After” to several tracks from the new “Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets” album, including the crushing tempest of ‘Spaceman in Tulsa,’ with which they opened the show.
Counting Crows’ lineup has hardly changed since they began gigging around the San Francisco Bay area in the early ‘90s. Adam Duritz still leads the group, which includes Charlie Gillingham on keyboards and accordion, Dan Vickrey (guitar) and David Bryson (rhythm guitar). Jim Bogios (drums) and Millard Powers (bassist) replaced the original rhythm section in the early 2000s, and David Immerglück became a full-time member fourteen years ago. His interplay with Duritz was featured throughout the evening, whether shredding an electric guitar or adding riffs from a mandolin.
To use an old sports analogy about veteran teams that have been together for several seasons, knowing what it takes to win games, Counting Crows has that tight, ‘been there, done that’ band feel, even though Duritz’s performances sometimes come off as untethered. This is what adds to their charm and keeps the material fresh and delivering cascading pangs of auditory amusement. That, and an outstanding new album featuring several songs that sound like band staples, but are not—yet, anyway. The new songs are less brooding and internalised and more open to discovery and introspection. Besides ‘Spaceman’, they played ‘Boxcars’, ‘Under the Aurora’, ‘with Love from A-Z’, and ‘Virginia Through the Rain’, a melancholy ballad that Duritz wrote on a train to visit his sister in Virginia while thinking of a girl he once knew named Virginia. But it also has to do with someone who is not anyone’s idea of a great person, someone with a lot of baggage, who puts himself first and as a result, people can’t get close to him. Hearing the song and watching Duritz perform it, your first impression is to recall ‘Anna Begins’ from the first album, with the lies and thinking about the consequences, but this character in Virginia is more apt to face his failures.
‘With Love from A-Z’ has instant classic written all over it, the crowd accepting it with a fervour usually reserved for the memorable hits from the past. It was the last song Duritz wrote for “Butter Miracle,” telling the crowd that “when it was finished, I knew we had a record.” Counting Crows has always had the gift of being able to shift from sonorous rock, as in their cover of Jackson C. Frank’s ‘Blues Run the Game,’ to the mellow ballad of ‘Angels of the Silences.’ It’s like flicking a light switch from on to off. Duritz sings about the voices in his head that are telling him: “All my sins, I would pay for them if I could come back to you”.
The older songs were played more tightly than I could remember from years past, as Duritz has seemingly tempered his proclivity for extending songs early Van Morrison-style. He clearly has more he wants to get across to the audience, beyond successes like ‘Omaha’ (I’m coming home today) and a version of ‘Round Here’ which was played with only Bellingham accompanying. During an ambient intro, they segued into the song with part of M.J. Lendeman’s ‘Wristwatch’ from his “Manning Fireworks” album, a nod to Lendeman covering ‘A Long December’ last year, before the rest of the band returned for a vibrant finish. Later, in a little twist, they used Taylor Swift’s ‘The 1’ as an intro to ‘A Long December.’ 
The centrepiece of the band always will be Duritz, and he seems in a good place these days, moving freely around the stage, standing atop a monitor, urging on Immerglück’s solo. The whole band was in great form; the lighting was tasteful and impressive. The setlist was the right length and varied nicely, although a local curfew cut short the encore before they could play ‘Holiday in Spain.’ A wild version of ‘Rain King’ ended the set and prepared the crowd for a tasty encore featuring ‘Under the Aurora’ and ‘Hanginaround’ from “This Desert Life.”
Duritz is clearly a fan of Brian Fallon and The Gaslight Anthem, extolling their virtues and referencing their song ‘High Lonesome,’ saying how he much prefers touring with friends before introducing the members of Counting Crows. The Jersey classic rock band offers just what you would expect if you’ve listened to their music at all, and it appeared more than a few in the crowd had come to hear their set. ‘Mulholland Drive,’ ‘The ’59 Sound’ and their anthemic closer ‘45’ drew the most applause, though the band clearly had the crowd’s attention throughout. This is a real dirt-under-the-fingernails, rough-around-the-edges band that plays to their advantages, namely Fallon’s gritty vocals and Byrds-like jangling guitars, which were just right for a cover of Tom Petty’s ‘Honey Bee’ and Mother Love Bone’s ‘Chloe Dancer.’
As good as they were, it was made abundantly clear from the first chords of ‘Spaceman in Tulsa’ with Duritz shouting out that “I’m a motherfucking rock and roll star”, who the headliner band was, and as Counting Crows blasted right through ‘Hard Candy’ and began the slow wind up to ‘Mr. Jones’, you got a glimpse of how Duritz writes songs as self-therapy. He hoped Mr. Jones would help him believe in anything and looked for reasons to believe in ‘A Long December.’ As the encore began with ‘Under the Aurora,’ he professed that “Maybe I could believe in one thing”. He is figuring things out, which means this is a great time to see the band in action.
