The latest offering from the wizards of early to mid 90’s rock cool shows that they might have over reached themselves and landed in between a concept album and an over elaborated mess.
For starters the guitar, good as it is, dominates to the extent where it sounds like a hunter killer on a seek and destroy mission. As a result the vocals are over extended and strained trying to compete.
There is a tendency here to try and include the entire guitar repertoire in each track that achieves nothing but complicated listening with just too much incoming aurally for any but the most obsessed and rabid CC nut.
The first track has an intro straight out of the Deep Purple songbook which is all very well, one could nick from other less valuable rock sources, but the track goes nowhere from that auspicious start.
Track two takes a riff direct from the deceased Kurt Cobain which raises serious questions about cross border communications and then does precisely what the first track did. Nothing.
Track three makes the attentive listener feel as if they are on a ‘match the riff’ competition for gummy bears with ABBA collections for those that participate through to the bitter end.
Track four is almost rescued by the best guitar work on the album but it’s a false dawn predicted by a false prophet. “You think that you can do without me,” is like a gauntlet laid down before the CC faithful.
Track 5 owes more than a credit or two to Queen but once again after a great kick start it goes nowhere and with prescient and insightful lyrics like, “I don’t wanna be insignificant,” it’s doomed before it’s out of the garage.
“I don’t know how to see the same things different now,” betrays a deep need to move on past August and everything after. It’s like a remake of Joseph Heller desperately trying to write another novel after ‘Catch 22’.
If the reader is getting the visual image of repetition and flogging of horses that died before the west was won than this review is serving a purpose. Track six entitled ‘Cowboys’ flatters to deceive and then rolls over and reverts to type following in the hoofsteps of its’ inauspicious predecessors.
‘Washington Square’ ends part one leaving the listener upbeat as the intensity has changed focus leaving a finely crafted tune, setting the stage for part two.
During the first half of this attempted magnum opus the guitar is not so much an intrusive fellow instrument as simply laying all to waste in scythe like manner. The benefit of listening up till halfway is that the second half comes as a life saver with some magical lyrics and shorter songs shorn of the excess that bloated the first seven tracks.
Track 8, ‘On almost any Sunday …’, has some harmonica and traces of Neil Young and for once the inspiration from another rock act is built upon by the Crows and the track works, promising some silver lining on those dark clouds that have gathered since the album first hit play.
‘When I dream of Michelangelo’ comes next and this is classic Counting Crows. Singalong lyrics with an easy to follow rhythm and melody, it beggars belief that these Crows don’t focus where they’re best, even if it is more commercialised than the attempted concept or progressive rock that tainted part one of this album in two parts.
‘Anyone but you’ has introspection and a bit of a philosophical take on life and once again does the business despite being a bit long. This obsession with making tracks longer than necessary is quite draining for the listener. Maybe it’s an attempt to disengage from the Google generation with all its attention deficit disorder problems.
‘You can’t count on me’ is quite refreshing with restrained guitar that meshes with the rest of the band and is probably hit material. The changes in tempo grab the listener and build some expectation that isn’t denied.
Track 13 is an awful tear jerker that brings to mind those minstrels that were paid by the chord, so they had to drag out the song endlessly.
This listener got a distinct feeling that there was an attempt with this album to make a quantum leap or simply shift paradigms, upping another level or two from August and …, but the attempt got lost when complexity was mistaken for the profound.
Changing and evolving is good but throwing the baby out with the bathwater is no way to go about doing this as the strong points of CC sound are lost in the haze of gun smoke of part one but mostly regained in part two.
This will either leave ‘August and everything after’ in the dust forever, ditching the monkey, or else bomb completely sinking terminally under obesity and over endowed guitar work.
As for the over abundance of post 4 minute tracks, composing mini symphonies just ain’t Counting Crows anymore.
Counting Crows is no longer August and everything after, just Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings which may just be enough for the tried and tested roving groups of killers, operated by remote control, that buy CC albums in quantities that sink stock markets.
For this humble listener, a little more time in mixing and producing would have found a way to tie parts one and two of this album closer together. But there’s always a next time.
