Counting Crows – Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Artist: Counting Crows

Title: Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings

Label: Geffen

Rating: 5/10

Corporate line:
With over 20 million albums sold worldwide, eight Top 5 singles, and three records that have broken the Top 5 on the Billboard 200, COUNTING CROWS are set to release their long awaited new album SATURDAY NIGHTS & SUNDAY MORNINGS. The record is the Crows’ first studio album in almost 5 years, since the release of Hard Candy in 2002.

Best cuts:
Nothing.

The rest:
“Los Angeles” – Slow, lovely, but there is nothing here that is going to force the listener to believe its better than it is.
“Cowboys” – The melody is there–the punch hits you–but the lyrics aren’t up to snuff.
“Insignificant” – There is no melody for this track. It meanders through and through never finding anything to grasp on to.
“Le Ballet D’Or” – Duritz has the ability to take a simple melody and make it sound like a full blown masterpiece. This track often feels like its going to break into such a masterpiece and yet it never reaches those peaks.
“1492” – The moment Duritz works up enough emotion to make you believe he actually cares about what he is singing about it’s a silly history of Columbus. The sad part is that the chorus is good–its the silly lyrics that kill the song.
“On a Tuesday in Amsterdam” – It gets a bit boring to find Duritz going back to the well over and over. All these lyrics about Amsterdam, satellites, on a wire, lost love and so on. It was old five years ago and its only getting worse.

Finally:
Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is a hodge-podge of Counting Crows old, new, and undetermined. For whatever reason a great record that seems missing here just waiting to explode out of its skin never comes through. The sad fact is that this has become the same story over the last few albums. Duritz is uncanny in his ability to write good songs and make you believe too bad neither of his better qualities made their way to this album.