Counting Crows

Counting Crows pretty much opened and shut the door on heartbroken-college-dude-radio-rock-by-way-of-Van-Morrison with this gazillion-selling album. "Mr. Jones" incorporates all the things that make Counting Crows what they are: fantastic songwriting; spot-on, rootsy playing; and Adam Duritz's pained, impassioned vocals.

Great rock & roll is often cinematic, creating worlds that listeners can enter, sonic
moments that they can live in. What is most impressive about August and Everything After,
the debut album from the Bay area quintet Counting Crows, is how many such moments
there are. August reveals a restless, confident band of songwriters who are steeped in the
rock tradition yet anxious to extend it. It's easy to hear the group's influences –... More >

Adam Duritz sings like the dutiful son of permissive parents I hope don't sit next to me at Woodstock. He went to good summer camps; he doesn't eat junk food; he's confused about all the right things. And he's not going away anytime soon--so starved are his peers for a show of musical emotion more learned than Mariah Carey's that some even compare him to Van Morrison, as if all sodden self-pity were the same. It doesn't end with Duritz, either--"Mr. Jones" and "Anna Begins" might live up to the songs in them if the band conceived the tracks as music first and songs second. Folk-rockers never do. (Grade - B-)