You can't count on me.

Counting Crow's new disc, "Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings", starts off with a fundamentally intriguing concept. Although it is only one disc, the first seven songs are a representation of Saturday Night, and the latter seven mirror Sunday Morning. This duality is not only accomplished by lyrics, feel, and the music, but by the different producers that produced each "side" of the album. Needless to say, Saturday night is a little more rough and rocking, while the Sunday morning is what you would more expect from Counting Crows; mellow, oddly melodic, and slower.

The first few tracks hit right away with a hard rocking theme, almost too hard for the Crows to pull off. It sounds like Duritz and the band is a little out of their league with the music, but the vocals and lyrics are full of the typical dramatic and interesting phrasing.  Even a semi serious guitar solo is thrown in. Maybe I have not dug deep enough to their full collection, but these first few rough tracks just seem very different from my preconceived notions of the Crows. They pull off the rockier sound decently well, and definitely the songs fit for the Saturday night theme. 

The second set of songs for Sunday morning are very well done. It is here where we find their lead single, "You Can't Count on Me". This song is assuredly the most radio friendly song, and its easy to see why the picked it for the first single. The second set of songs tend to lend themselves more to the Crow's style, and I feel the band and Duritz tend to be more solid in a slow to mid tempo song. Here he unleashes plenty of his well known lyrics with references to girls, places, and introspective questions. In these songs is where Duritz's phrasing and dramatic singing can be more the focal point and allows for the band to just lay back and chill, while adding their own bursts of musicality in between Duritz's vocal lines. 

For the whole album, the production is done well. The sound is typical for the Counting Crows, but the instrumentation is done tastefully enough for music critics but easily accessible enough for radio listeners. The vibe and feel of the album is not overly adventurous, as it sounds like a normal Counting Crows album. A banjo is added in for taste and it works well in the song "When I Dream of Michelangelo". The depth between the guitars and piano/organ works well on most songs as they seem to properly interact with one another. The album definitely lacks a chart topper, like "Mr. Jones", "A Long December", or "Round Here", but overall is a solid album for the Counting Crow's collection. It is hard for me to say where this rates in their body of work, but I feel fans of theirs would be happy with this effort. The album is good enough to listen to and has enough songs to really dig into it. Although it lacks a typical pop chart topper, it shows that Duritz and crew are truly back to their original form as they claim.

Key Tracks:

Hanging Tree

When I Dream of Michelangelo 

You Can't Count on Me

1492

3 1/2 stars out of 5

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Finally....

Donald Miller pushes back again.

Artwork

Myths, Legends, Truth, JUSTICE