When you have a friend that you’ve known long enough, you know when they’re being insincere. Basically, you can tell when they’re bullshitting you. No matter how hard they try to cover it up and spin in, you can look into their eyes and tell “you don’t mean that”, and you’re insulting us both by lying.
You can see it in today’s music. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. When musicians are under contract to make X albums, they have to do it. Or when they are commissioned to write a song for specifically for a movie soundtrack, they do it. If you listen to the lyrics, watch the way the songs are performed, and just say “how does this feel”, you can tell. Take Jay-Z for example. Watch the videos for 99 problems, then Blue Magic done for American Gangster. You can feel the sincerety in the first and the obligatory stuff in the second. Get past the catchyness of the song you’re listening to and you can feel how sincere the person singing it is. When Chad Kruger belts out “I wanna be a rock star” he really hopes he will get there one day, and who knows, maybe he will.
I’ve been listening to the new Counting Crows album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (while I’ve already mentioned how much I was looking forward to). Despite a Best Of Album and an Oscar-Nominated Top 40 hit, there hasn’t been a new Crows album in six years. And six years is a long time for an active, touring band to not record an album of any sort.
However, I can assure you that it has been worth the wait. A lot can happen in six years and this album is a true reflection of that. It tells the tale of what happens when you are just reckless, you get drunk, fuck things up, do things for all the wrong reasons and come the morning time you try to pick up the pieces and move on. Unlike what we heard with Accidentally in Love, this is some of the most sincere stuff I’ve heard Adam (Duritz) sing. His lyrics are strong and heartfelt.
As bands get bigger, the subject of their songs changes, and it becomes more about making a hit record then it does about the music. When you are first starting, you do it for the music, you throw your sound out there and hope someone picks it up, which is what they did with their now famously called “Flying Demos” album and even on August. But with Recovering the Satellites, This Desert Life, and Hard Candy behind them, the Crows now have enough staying power to truely do what they want as far as a record goes. I’m not dismissing their other work by any stretch, but this album is as sincere as any other words you have ever heard. It speaks honestly, from the heart, and in a very powerful tone.
I get the same feeling listening to this then I do with August although the albums themselves are very different. It is the feeling of the album being so honest that is done so well here and helps me to draw the parallel. There are also a few lyrics throughout the album that are similar to some ones from that album.
As a whole, the album is very polished, although some of the mixes I find a little strange (I did with AIL as well) but that’s a mute point at best. It also feels like a complete album. I was disappointed with You can’t count on me as the first single, as there are about half a dozen songs that would have made for a better single than that. It also sounds weird by itself, you almost have to listen to it in the album for it to make sense and transition well. The cool thing about this album is that it feels like a complete album, a group of songs that belong together. As opposed to an album which is just a bunch of songs thrown together on a disc.
It’s a shame that the Best Of album has already been done. It’s been amended once already to include AIL, but it might get re-released again with some of the amazing tracks on this new album. I’m not going to get into detail here about what each song is like and rate each one in turn. I’m not even going to say this album is a “X out of X stars”. That just doesn’t work here. The album is amazing, be sure to pick it up when it hits the shelves on March 25th or preorder it from amazon.
At this point, the actual album review is over, below is some person stuff of mine that relates to it.
Adam said about the album “Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings is the story of what happens when all the bright lights start to burn instead of glitter and you become more of a part of the shadow they cast behind you than the person you are in front… it’s about a flood of sin and liquor and dissolution and insanity and it’s about trying to rebuild the life you wrecked in the wake of that flood. It’s about the way it feels.”
Unfortunately, that has been my life during 2007. In my 22nd year on this planet, I have magially managed to have more sin and regret than I really want to admit to, but at the same time here I am, still trying to pick up the pieces of a live that I screwed up in more ways than I imagined I could. There are too many things on this album that I have said to myself over the course of the past year that I could do an entire book on how these lyrics relate to something that has happened to me, or something that reminds me of someone or a situation.
At the beginning of 2007 I was on top of the world. Newly single, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. I had a good job, was driving a Cadillac, and didn’t have any set commitment to anything other than myself. The year ended with me lying on my back unable to walk, stairing up at the sky. In that time I took my new found sense of self and came to the realization that I didn’t know who I was anymore. I tried to figure it out with concerts and parties, but there were too many Saturday (or Sunday) mornings where I woke up and said to myself “dammit, how can I be so fucking stupid?”.
I burned a lot of bridges without regret. I did some things that nobody should do and said some things that nobody should say. I took some risks that backfired on me and didn’t take other ones that I wish I would have. Some people I miss terribly, others I hope I never see again. 2007 started off with a bang, and ended up with a wimper of me trying to recover myself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t all physical recovery.
Cheers to Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings, the soundtrack to my life in 2007.
