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CD Review: Counting Crows’ Saturday Nights And Sunday Mornings
By Jessica Grabert: 2008-04-08 12:02:39
Well, ladies and gentlemen, it has all come down to circumstances beyond my control. I am going on fourteen days without the Internet. Two weeks without any connection to the infinite information normally within the reach of a mere fingertip. I have a problem with folding a newspaper and thus, don’t read ‘em. I have a problem with televisions and thus never turn ‘em on. Without the Internet, I have suffered from nearly two weeks of hermitage and seclusion. The only thing I can tell you about politics from the last fourteen days is that I dig ‘em. Don’t ask me which celebrities are in rehab or what critics think about the new Boleyn movie. I’ve had two weeks on holiday from most aspects of American culture. But I’ve had ample time to read and ample time to listen to music. The album on repeat is the Counting Crows’ Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings . I can remember when I jumped on the Crows’ bandwagon. The year was 1993 and August and Everything After had recently peaked the charts with their hit “Mr. Jones;” however, the rest of the album lacked the yearning, spontaneous idealism of “Mr. Jones,” opting instead to render its listening audience speechless with emotionally sensitive songs that fundamentally tore to pieces along with lyrics that were easy to remember, not because they maintained a mere catchy appeal, but because they jumped right out of the songs, through the ear cavity, straight into the brain. The average person knows “Mr. Jones.” The average music listener owns a copy of August and Everything After . Those who go beyond, well, certainly have a lot of time on their hands. The nineties had culminated and I’d practically stopped listening to the Counting Crows. Then, I received a copy of Films About Ghosts for Christmas and decided to check out their existing discography. Long story short, I thought their other albums were, well, just there. Neither good nor bad, not really worth my time but not a waste, either. Years later, a friend gushed on and on about This Desert Life until I borrowed her copy. I had a similar experience. The songs I heard were better than I remembered, but were still songs that were present while lacking charisma. Luckily, This Desert Life was the only album I had in my car for several months when I was in too much of a rush to change out my CDs. At the end of that time, This Desert Life had grown into an album that was just as close to my heart as August and Everything After . Experiencing the Counting Crows is similar to experiencing wine. Nearly everyone enjoys a particular shade or flavor of wine; however, until you understand what you like about the wine—a buttery finish, a bitter aftertaste—it can be difficult to pick up a wine habit. The deeper you look into trying wine, the more expert you become. The Counting Crows are initially like the White Zinfandel of wine. Universally accepted as drinkable, but not interesting or overly appealing. You can never fully pinpoint what you enjoy until you continually make further efforts. Thus, the lacking easy appeal factor enters. Alas, this conundrum was not solved with Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings . The album begins with the track “1492,” a song that made me feel as if I was listening to a ridiculous, written-for-second-grade-music-class rock song and, indeed, contains the line, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” History and music equated together. The album itself seems to be equally equated into two mental states. Saturday Nights is upbeat and more loudly entertaining while Sunday Mornings maintains a more heartfelt mentality. Four turns of the Merry-Go-Round in and I still didn’t understand why they chose this format. What I’ve found I normally enjoy, my own personal wine choice concerning the Counting Crows is they’ve never needed a concept; their songs have always been distant from one another while still creating a whole. One song will fade into the next, having nothing to do with the last, yet still culminating into an album that transports me into a thoughtful state. Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings has not yet allowed me to make this connection. I wondered why the band had chosen these songs or this song order…and then I was reading the album insert and noticed Adam Duritz’s little side note. It said, “ Records should be what they’re meant to be.” I said to myself, “O.K., then,” but I still don’t really understand the album or its songs. Yet, like always, I get the sense the connection is there and I keep missing it. What should be simple rarely is. It may take me three more weeks or two more months or a year to wholeheartedly enjoy Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings . It seems silly, but after two weeks of listening, I still can’t quite grasp the album by its core. If past efforts are any indication, the time I spend will eventually be worth the pleasure. At least I hope. There may be a puzzle piece missing, but eventually I feel I will find it. It’s sort of like attempting to read Joyce or Eliot without footnotes— the writing doesn’t always make sense, but you keep reading because you know, eventually, you’ll find some sort of fulfillment. It’s certainly enough for me to keep listening. RELATED: counting crows, cd review
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