Counting Crows

Since it wasn't broke, they didn't fix much with Recovering the Satellites, a record that finds Adam Duritz and company gently developing the solid formulas of their debut. Again, the Crows' decorate their gently grungey folk with tricks from the classic rocker's gig bag -- twanging guitar, Hammond organ, piano -- but the urgency in Duritz's disenchantment and disappointment with the world around him keeps the simple elements sounding fresh.

After Counting Crows' 1993 debut album, August and Everything After, went multiplatinum,
the band took heat from hipsters who typed its classic-rock influences – Van Morrison,
Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones – as conservative. The Crows were seen as blunting the
triumph of grunge, although Hootie and the Blowfish soon came along to assume the
burden of that unfair charge. But lost in that quick dismissal is the fact that the C... More >