Counting Crows live!

Counting Crows
Midway Stadium, St. Paul, MN
Saturday, September 1, 2007

On a glorious September night, a respectable audience, throbbing with an anticipatory sense of nostalgia, gathered to witness the return of genuine alt-rock superstars Counting Crows. Lead singer Adam Duritz has battled his demons, but after reforming body, mind, and soul, he and his bandmates have embarked on a summer tour of minor league ballparks in a sly, triumphant declaration that the Crows are ready to return to The Show.

After such a prolonged absence, the decision to open their set with unreleased material was a ballsy one, made even more audacious considering “When I Dream Of Michelangelo” is an introspective, soporific number off their yet-to-be released album, Saturday Nights And Sunday Mornings. That selection risked setting the wrong tone for the entire night, but they quickly atoned for this misstep by jumping into a kinetic, if workmanlike, rendition of their smash hit, “Mr. Jones.” Counting Crows are notorious for improvising and re-arranging familiar hits into frustrating, unrecognizable forms, and though they appeared uninterested, they refrained from indulging this impulse keeping “Mr. Jones” compact and punchy.

Similarly, the new cut “Cowboy” was a sonic cyclone of interweaving guitar and driving rhythms; combined with the other new tracks, “Hanging Tree” and “Insignificant,” it signals something of a revolution in the Crows’ sound. “Goodnight, Elizabeth” recalled a typical Crows performance, as Duritz interrupted the elongated proceedings with an emotionally wrought explanation of the meaning of the song, something he apparently just discovered after a recent break-up. In another awkward moment, some friends and family joined them onstage for a boisterous send up of “Hangin’ Around,” but what should have been a spontaneous moment of insouciant celebration seemed contrived and hardly worth the trouble.

Early on, Duritz bemoaned the fact that he was missing the Cal/Tennessee football game, and his performance lacked its usual fire and passion (unless he was righteously praising local outreach groups and political participation). More than that, the crowd seemed flummoxed by the set list and the direction of the new material. As one of my cohorts beautifully and succinctly summed up as we were leaving, “Decent, but too much new shit, not enough old hits.”

— Patrick Conlan

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly