The Counting Crows are best know for the hit singles Mr Jones and Round Here from their 1993 album August and Everything After, (which incidentally, was the fastest selling album in the US since Nirvana’s Nevermind at the time). They’ve been at it all these intervening years though, putting out a further four studio albums and touring extensively. For many, the single from 2002’s Hard Candy – a rather insipid cover of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi – was a deal breaker, and little has been heard here since.
The intervening years evaporated when they took the stage on Friday night. Singer and main songwriter Adam Duritz could have walked straight out of 1995, seemingly not having aged a day. (Ladies take note – the secret to disguising the ravages of time has been here all along – cultivate a beard and dreadlocks and just watch the years fall away). Complementing this was Duritz’s stage presence and voice. He remained animated throughout the show, working the stage, teetering shambolically across foldbacks and gesticulating at unseen objects from his lyrics. While his energy throughout the two hour set was undeniable, the constant pantomime did distract at times.
They opened with a track from their 2008 album Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings – the upbeat rocker Cowboys. This set the tone for the brand of broad Americana-tinged rock that dominated the evening. The sounds of big country skies and lyrics full of folorn yearning are immediately familiar and, were it not for Adam Duritz’s instantly recognizable voice, very difficult to identify specifically as Counting Crows. For some reason I had Don Henley’s The End of Innocence stuck in my head all the next day.
In fairness, a few tracks bucked the prevailing trend. Second song of the night Children In Bloom from their 1996 album Recovering Satellites was one of the highlights. A wide-open spacey track that built into a frenetic jam, the seven piece band behind Duritz relishing the opportunity to stomp on several effects pedals and rip a few solos.
Lead guitarist Dave Immergluck entertained in a most hilarious fashion throughout, with a spectacular display of pelvis thrusting and cheesy finger pointing maneuvers, particularly in fourth track of the night Miami. He later backed this up in Hanging Tree by actually machine-gunning the crowd with his guitar. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the irony was at least partly intentional. For his part, Duritz introduced Hanging Tree as ‘a song about losing your fucking mind’. If this is to be believed, losing your mind sounds surprisingly upbeat and chatty. Think less ‘debilitating mental illness’ and more ‘Natalie Portman in Garden State’. For reasons I still don’t understand he also donned a pair of spectacles halfway through the song.
Immediately following, Time and Time Again provided a more brooding counterpoint with some subtle pedal steel and organ arrangements. This and the nicely sparse Anna Begins, these were some of the most effective songs on the night, their darker, more introspective approach helping sell the lyrical focus on inner turmoil a little better.
The moment many were waiting for came eight songs into the set when Mr Jones made his appearance. The entire crowd rose to their feet within seconds and sang along the whole way, ending with the night’s biggest cheer. That the band gave a proficient if slightly workmanlike rendition was barely noticed amid the tsunami of nostalgia. It was one of the few songs that sounded thin for the number of people on stage. An amiable Duritz commented, ‘I see…so you stand up for ‘The Single’’ as the crowd returned to their seats.
The other ‘Big Single’, Round Here proved to be one of the highlights of the evening. Sounding much fuller than the recording, the band played with palpable emotion, nailing the ebbs and flows of the track. Duritz also gave it his all, but tended to oversell it at points, his improvised rambling through the mid section of the song aimed for raw emotion but sounded mostly petulant.
The evening wound up with a two song encore, finishing with the title track from 2002’s Hard Candy. As the theatre emptied, I was left to reflect that Counting Crows are certainly a professional group of musicians and clearly at ease with what they do. Adam Duritz is also an engaging frontman, even if he does over do it at times. This made it all the more of a shame then that there were so few surprises or intriguing left turns to be had. No matter how well executed, the majority of the evening was a style of moderate rock that is completely ubiquitous, and as a result, all too easy to only partly engage with.
to listen to their music now on 
