One of the most flagrant cases of discrepancy between the perception of the casual public and the reality is to believe that Counting Crows are some one hit wonders. Okay, the band has never had a ball like ‘Mr. Jones’ of his 1993 debut -if well with the time ‘A Long December’ became an equally classic song -but for a formation with a catalog like his, that label is terribly unfair, almost insulting.
It is true that after that brilliant poker formed by August & Everything After, Recovering The Satellites, This Desert Life y Hard Candy In his first decade of life, his discography has been pulling erratic: his latest album Somewhere Under Wonderland came out in 2014 and the second part of the EP Butter Miracle, Suite One Of 2021 it has taken four years to see the light. And to do things a little more confusing, this is not exactly the promised continuation of that, but, either by the pandemic, because the EP format perhaps is useful for urban artists, but not so much for a classic court, or simply because they have changed their idea, what we have is an album with five new songs on the face A and the four of the original EP in face B. But beyond the format, the important thing is that it works.
Unlike the four parts of the Suite Onein which music flows from one to another as if it were a single piece, the five unpublished themes (and for me superior) are presented independently, although both the thematic and stylistic and sound level of all form a coherent package, a kind of allegory about making the dream of becoming a rock star come true. To do this, Adam Duritz and his gang collect the most canonical Classic Rock Wit and The Who in the Opereta ‘Bobby and the Rat-Kings’ or simply themselves in the ballad ‘Virginia Through the Rain’.
While inspiration is not shown with the same brio as in his best works, it is exciting to find a group that with more than three decades behind him still worries about working the melodies, arrangements and interpretations with the vocation and care of a craftsman.
COUT
