Counting Crows

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Essential Albums

  • Recovering the Satellites
    Recovering the Satellites
    Recovering the Satellites

    Adam Duritz had sung repeatedly about wanting to be a star on the Counting Crows’ breakthrough hit, “Mr. Jones”. But when fame came, he did not find it easy. By the end of 1994, as the group’s debut album, August and Everything After, laddered its way up the charts, Duritz was already over the invasive nature of celebrity. “There are, like, intense amounts of people that know very personal things about me,” he told a journalist. “The repercussions of it are pretty weird.” And that was before his brief romance with Friends actress Jennifer Aniston—whom he’d met at the Hollywood bar where he had often bartended and played—made him dreadlocked tabloid fodder. So Duritz did what he’d done pre-stardom, retreating into his notebooks to write songs that again reckoned with his turmoil. With the clout of a multi-platinum album at their disposal, the members of Counting Crows plucked producer Gil Norton, an indie-rock mainstay who had worked with the Pixies and Pere Ubu. The result, 1996’s Recovering the Satellites, is a brilliantly bifurcated record. More than half the songs hinge on the screaming guitars of the great Dan Vickrey and the pled confessionals of Duritz; the rest arrive as arching ballads, pretty and pained. The rock songs roar, the band tangles inside Duritz’s quest for redemption. By the end of “I’m Not Sleeping”, he’s nearly screaming his frustrations as the guitars coil around him like hands around a throat. And “Have You Seen Me Lately?”—with a lead riff befitting the Pixies’ Doolittle—is a fascinating bit of young rock-god introspection, one that finds Duritz contemplating the way he changes as distant strangers memorise his words. It’s all something to whimper and shout about, as he does time and again during this cathartic hour. But it’s those softer songs that have made Recovering the Satellites so memorable: The acoustic devotional of “Monkey”, the shameless yearning of “Goodnight Elisabeth”, the California dreaming of “A Long December”—the latter an accordion-laced ode to allowing yourself to hope, no matter how foolish it seems. Recovering the Satellites didn’t sell like its predecessor, but its rage and range testified to a focused and curious band that wanted to be more than mere paparazzi fodder.

  • August and Everything After
    August and Everything After
    August and Everything After

    “We all wanna be big stars,” Adam Duritz admits during the final minute of “Mr. Jones”, his pep momentarily dissolving into a bittersweet yelp. “But we don’t know why, and we don’t know how.” Indeed, for the first three months after San Francisco’s Counting Crows released their debut, August and Everything After, in the fall of 1993, it seemed as though Geffen Records had bet big on a flop—that the band’s fairy-tale brush with fame would end in anonymity. A&R legend Gary Gersh began trailing the band around town in the early 1990s, ignoring the band’s unstable line-up long enough to spot a star in Duritz. And T Bone Burnett—yet another legend, and the former guitarist for Duritz’s obvious north star, Bob Dylan—signed on to produce the band’s debut record, a compelling showcase of self-doubt and ambition that, upon its arrival, no one seemed to care about. But as a long December passed, “Mr. Jones”—that madcap account of musicians doing it for the love, but maybe one day for the money, too—slowly caught traction as a single, with Duritz’s bleat serving as an uncanny MTV beacon for those who felt outside of grunge. In early 1994, August and Everything After finally landed on the furthest reaches of the album charts. But by year’s end, the album had become a multi-platinum smash, an early indication of a softer-rock sea-change that would soon lead to the rise of such acts as Dave Matthews Band and Ben Folds Five. Though that slow rise must have been frustrating, it fit the self-regard of the 11 songs collected on August and Everything After. Sure, Duritz had the gumption to sing “I wanna be Bob Dylan”. But he resents and interrogates himself often here, questioning his capacity to live—let alone love. During “Rain King”, he realises he’s the source of an unnamed paramour’s woes, but he wants neither pity nor sustenance. And on the devastating “Perfect Blue Buildings”, he hides out from someone he loves, too riddled by addiction and affliction to be seen. “Love is a ghost train rumbling through the darkness,” he sings over mandolin runs and trotting drums at one point, discarding the one thing in which he’d found hope. Despite its Americana trappings, August and Everything After would become a gateway for a generation of emo and metalcore kids. Duritz, after all, perfectly balanced his vulnerability and worry with the confidence to shout out loud about both, his voice cracking with complete candour.

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About Counting Crows

In 1993, when grunge was still the coin of the realm, Counting Crows flew into view as an alternative to the alternative. Fronted by commanding, quirky singer Adam Duritz, the band formed in San Francisco in 1991 and released their debut, August and Everything After, two years later. With reflective, poetic lyrics and a sound that seemed influenced in equal parts by ’80s alt bands like R.E.M. and classic rockers like The Band and Van Morrison, the group connected with those hungry for something other than heavy guitars. The album became a blockbuster, going multiplatinum and birthing a huge hit single with “Mr. Jones”. For the 1996 follow-up, Recovering the Satellites, they introduced new members Ben Mize on drums and Dan Vickrey on guitar while expanding their sound to include string orchestrations on several songs. The record went to No. 1 in the U.S. and generated a hit in the elegiac, piano-led “A Long December”. It would be the band’s last visit to the Top 10—though their albums continued to find a loyal audience, by the 2000s their rootsy, introspective sound had fallen out of style. They effectively became one of America’s biggest cult bands, touring successfully without the aid of hit singles, and continuing to create carefully crafted, expertly nuanced records. 

ORIGIN
San Francisco, CA, United States
FORMED
1991
GENRE
Rock

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