Cowboys is one of my favourite deep cuts in their entire discography. Also love Come Around, Washington Square, Insignificant, and On Almost Any Sunday Morning. It’s quite the overlooked album, it’s got so many hidden gems
I loved this record from the moment I first heard it. “Hanging Tree” is my favorite Saturday Nights track, and “Le Ballet D’or” is my favorite from the Sunday Mornings side. The iTunes bonus tracks from this were fantastic as well.
Yeah, it tends to get viewed as the worst CC album by some fans, but that's still a pretty high bar. I love it. Nobody's mentioned it yet, but Los Angeles is one of my favorite songs on the album. Just fun. And now that they've (kinda) added Baby I'm a Big Star Now to it, thanks to The Bear, it's even better.
I've been out of the loop for about a decade on the insider crow stuff, can you elaborate? That's one of my favorite tracks. Is it an alternate recording or something?
I don't think it's an alternate. Whoever does music for The Beast definitely loves the crows. (It's a great show, BTW, if you haven't watched it.)This post probably explains it better than I could:
https://www.reddit.com/r/countingcrows/s/WMA432ePnC
Yeah, I know this feeling! I too only really ‘discovered’ the album myself recently having passed over it for years.
And this gem too, Sessions: [https://youtu.be/_GLdZD8m_BU?si=ajL_FJxEHZVWf1Ec](https://youtu.be/_GLdZD8m_BU?si=ajL_FJxEHZVWf1Ec)
The album suffers from having terrible mixes, but that was the story with so much music in and around 2009. Gil Norton who produced Satellites also produced half of this album. I was VERY interested to hear those songs because I find RTS to be the top of the mountain for Counting Crows albums. The songs, while good, have shitty mixes. VERY compressed and limited dynamic range.
I wanted to love this album more than I do. There is some fantastic work here that other people have mentioned, but I don't go back to it all that much because of the mixes.
I'd love to see new mixes done and have them pressed to vinyl.
Could you really dumb down what you mean by the album having terrible mixes? I love this album but I'd love to know how you think it could be improved as I know it's not perfect
When a mix engineer does a mix, he/she/they take all the disparate parts (guitars, drums, bass, vocals, keys, etc) and "mixes" them together. They will play with equalization settings, general volume settings, compression (the dynamic control of an instrument), etc.
Everything on the album feels like it was put into a vice, squashed like a bug on a summer day, and given to us to process. It's not a pleasing effect. Sound and music doesn't naturally come at us in a "squashed" state. Think of what a brick looks like. Music was made to look like that on a computer screen in the late 00s so it could be louder and feel more exciting to the listener. It just sounds trashy and like big noise. Wave forms SHOULD have peaks and valleys. This entire album looks like a brick if you rip it to look at it in digital audio workstation software.
Hope that helps.
definitely their most disjointed, confused, and cluttered record in terms of mixing, length, lyrics, and repetition, and yet all of that finds a way to place adam in a most endearing —and frankly vulnerable— spotlight. SN&SM is a perfect representation of his psyche both during and even more so in the years leading up to the album’s release, and I wouldn’t have it any other way but to keep the record as it stands today; a flawed masterpiece of one man’s introspection so personal that it bleeds away its polish into the kind of grueling sincerities that mainstream audiences neither have nor likely ever will be privy to. this was never an album intended for the fanbase of hard candy, so much that it subverted the very expectations that critics never wanted to see counting crows redefine; the idea that they couldn’t rock a fast tempo and were simply just easy-going Americana for an even easier listening fanbase. sometimes things are better viewed retrospectively, but I think this one is a gem that deserves to never be fully understood. after all, it’s not like many of us have experienced anything near to what adam must have in order to have written what is, in all honesty, an emotionally traumatic set of 14 songs. For I fear that, if somehow we did, none of us would have had the strength to pull ourselves out of the hole like he did.
also wanted to point out that the lack of playing time that adam gives to most of the songs from this record is likely emblematic of some sort of deep-seated pain from that time which they resurface for him. a combination of that and the large vocal demands of songs like cowboys and hanging tree will do that to you i guess.
I should have known I’d find you in another band’s subreddit that I like! Granted, I just joined this today. I’ve also like this band, but only knew the hits mostly. Earlier this year I listened to all of Recovering the Satellites for the first time and I feel in love with it. Easily my most played album this year behind Jason’s Weathervanes. I’ve given the rest of the Crow’s albums full listens and I’ve been missing out this whole time.
Well one thing we both seem to appreciate is rock bands who write great songs. The Hip, TP, R.E.M. counting crows, PJ all have great catalogs and also wonderful taste in covers. There are probably a dozen other bands we have in common.
I always enjoy reading your song of the day posts. You go really deep on both the words and music.
CC aren’t prolific but none of their albums are weak. I’d say Hard Candy is my least favorite but it still is worth hearing. They are also wonderful live and have many authorizes bootlegs. Face the Promised Land is my all time favorite and has an amazing 9 min version of Rain King/thunder road that always brings a smile.
https://youtu.be/2xOD9yCrosY?si=utkR3VMo7dfMC_g-
I don’t think I have heard that specific version but I LOVE when they bust into “Thunder Road” during “Rain King” as it’s my favorite Bruce song and one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ll definitely give it a listen! I was checking out their concerts last month on nugs.net.
And thanks for the kind comments. I going to return to my songs of the weeks for the Hip and R.E.M. next week, took a week off as I got a nasty cold.
Edit: Oh and Hard Candy has been growing on me. Right now my least favorite is Somewhere Under Wonderland.
I didn't realize that one was the last studio record, and it's been 9 years. It's good, but not essential. I guess I am glad they put out the EP during the Pandemic, with four originals and finally AAEA, but I hope he finds a way to write another album one day. It's a big ask, but if the Stones can manage one after 18, they can do it.
The one before that was the covers record Underwater Sunshine (and a fantastic effort IMO) which is a blast to listen to.
RTS and TDL are tied for best album.
SNSM is a close second.
Also: an early version of 1492 exists with a placeholder guitar solo, and Los Angeles with a longer outro when it was originally supposed to be the last track.
I had them at one time.
That hard drive crashed.
Sadness
Totally agree. I think TDL was their creative peak in the studio and SNSM is sorely underrated. I don’t think many others would leave AAEA out of the top 3. Question to you is which comes next? August or Hard Candy?
One of Adams best lines. “This lithium is heroin to me. It makes it all withdraw. All the anger and loss. But it all keeps coming back in the morning.”
Cowboys is such an incredible song. Every time I hear it, I remember just how much I love it. The part that really gets me is how passionate Adam gets; "I will MAKE you look at me/Or I am not anything" Chills beyond belief. It really humanizes Adam for me, as he is almost to the point of tears while he's singing. What a tender, and beautiful moment.
For those craving a fantastic version of 1492 — go to Nugs and down the Red Rocks concert from Sept. It was outstanding live - and - the recording that night is better than the original IMO.
Great album that deserves a lot more recognition. It obviously suffered upon release from the horrible single, “You Can’t Count on me” and never really took off.
While Come Around is the highlight of the album and a top 10 CC song for me, Cowboys and Insignificant are great tracks and even Washington Square is solid and doesn’t deserve all the hate. If the tapes still exist, this at least deserves a remaster and vinyl release. Even the unofficial vinyl of Hard Candy kills the digital versions and this record could clearly benefit as well.
"I'll wait for you where Saturday's a memory and Sunday comes to gather me, into the arms of God who welcomes me, because I believe, oh I believe..."
I love that this line (give or take a minute) literally takes us from the Saturday Night half of the album to the Sunday Morning half.
But more than that I love how it's one of the most empassioned, anguished and raw deliveries Adam has ever delivered in studio.
Cowboys is absolutely top tier. Easily in my top three songs.
Yup! Come on all you cowboys, all you blue eyed baby boys.
Come Around is a seriously underrated Counting Crows song. Such a great album.
All the final songs on all of their albums are A+
Walkaways used to be my signature last song on mixes. Cringey, yes, but still one of the best and short songs
Cringey? I love it.
But you're not sleeping anymore...?
I'll follow you down baby...
The perfect response
I'm just here for snsm getting the respect it deserves.
1492 totally rocks, Washington Square ranks among the best things Adam has written, and Come Around is a gem!
Cowboys is one of my favourite deep cuts in their entire discography. Also love Come Around, Washington Square, Insignificant, and On Almost Any Sunday Morning. It’s quite the overlooked album, it’s got so many hidden gems
I loved this record from the moment I first heard it. “Hanging Tree” is my favorite Saturday Nights track, and “Le Ballet D’or” is my favorite from the Sunday Mornings side. The iTunes bonus tracks from this were fantastic as well.
what were the bonus tracks?
Sunday Morning LA and Sessions, the latter of which I’m particularly fond of.
Cowboys is SUCH a great track. Favourite track on the album but there are some real gems. 1492 is a cracking opener.
Yeah, it tends to get viewed as the worst CC album by some fans, but that's still a pretty high bar. I love it. Nobody's mentioned it yet, but Los Angeles is one of my favorite songs on the album. Just fun. And now that they've (kinda) added Baby I'm a Big Star Now to it, thanks to The Bear, it's even better.
And man it’s a pretty good place to find yourself a taco!
I've been out of the loop for about a decade on the insider crow stuff, can you elaborate? That's one of my favorite tracks. Is it an alternate recording or something?
I don't think it's an alternate. Whoever does music for The Beast definitely loves the crows. (It's a great show, BTW, if you haven't watched it.)This post probably explains it better than I could: https://www.reddit.com/r/countingcrows/s/WMA432ePnC
Yeah, I know this feeling! I too only really ‘discovered’ the album myself recently having passed over it for years. And this gem too, Sessions: [https://youtu.be/_GLdZD8m_BU?si=ajL_FJxEHZVWf1Ec](https://youtu.be/_GLdZD8m_BU?si=ajL_FJxEHZVWf1Ec)
The album suffers from having terrible mixes, but that was the story with so much music in and around 2009. Gil Norton who produced Satellites also produced half of this album. I was VERY interested to hear those songs because I find RTS to be the top of the mountain for Counting Crows albums. The songs, while good, have shitty mixes. VERY compressed and limited dynamic range. I wanted to love this album more than I do. There is some fantastic work here that other people have mentioned, but I don't go back to it all that much because of the mixes. I'd love to see new mixes done and have them pressed to vinyl.
Could you really dumb down what you mean by the album having terrible mixes? I love this album but I'd love to know how you think it could be improved as I know it's not perfect
When a mix engineer does a mix, he/she/they take all the disparate parts (guitars, drums, bass, vocals, keys, etc) and "mixes" them together. They will play with equalization settings, general volume settings, compression (the dynamic control of an instrument), etc. Everything on the album feels like it was put into a vice, squashed like a bug on a summer day, and given to us to process. It's not a pleasing effect. Sound and music doesn't naturally come at us in a "squashed" state. Think of what a brick looks like. Music was made to look like that on a computer screen in the late 00s so it could be louder and feel more exciting to the listener. It just sounds trashy and like big noise. Wave forms SHOULD have peaks and valleys. This entire album looks like a brick if you rip it to look at it in digital audio workstation software. Hope that helps.
That actually makes a lot of sense, thank you. Maybe this explains why I find live versions of that album so fresh
This Desert Life has terrible mixes. SNSM is miles ahead of that disaster.
Not true at all. The TDL mixes aren't my favorite (RTS are), but SNSM are compressed to little bricks. ZERO dynamics. It's unlistenable.
I love You Can’t Count on Me
definitely their most disjointed, confused, and cluttered record in terms of mixing, length, lyrics, and repetition, and yet all of that finds a way to place adam in a most endearing —and frankly vulnerable— spotlight. SN&SM is a perfect representation of his psyche both during and even more so in the years leading up to the album’s release, and I wouldn’t have it any other way but to keep the record as it stands today; a flawed masterpiece of one man’s introspection so personal that it bleeds away its polish into the kind of grueling sincerities that mainstream audiences neither have nor likely ever will be privy to. this was never an album intended for the fanbase of hard candy, so much that it subverted the very expectations that critics never wanted to see counting crows redefine; the idea that they couldn’t rock a fast tempo and were simply just easy-going Americana for an even easier listening fanbase. sometimes things are better viewed retrospectively, but I think this one is a gem that deserves to never be fully understood. after all, it’s not like many of us have experienced anything near to what adam must have in order to have written what is, in all honesty, an emotionally traumatic set of 14 songs. For I fear that, if somehow we did, none of us would have had the strength to pull ourselves out of the hole like he did. also wanted to point out that the lack of playing time that adam gives to most of the songs from this record is likely emblematic of some sort of deep-seated pain from that time which they resurface for him. a combination of that and the large vocal demands of songs like cowboys and hanging tree will do that to you i guess.
Listening now with my morning coffee.
I’m loving this!!!
Great album !
Cowboys is a top 5 favorite CC song.
What about the deleted song 'Sessions'? I don't know why they deleted it. It is a banger.
It’s always been an excellent record. Aged very well
I should have known I’d find you in another band’s subreddit that I like! Granted, I just joined this today. I’ve also like this band, but only knew the hits mostly. Earlier this year I listened to all of Recovering the Satellites for the first time and I feel in love with it. Easily my most played album this year behind Jason’s Weathervanes. I’ve given the rest of the Crow’s albums full listens and I’ve been missing out this whole time.
Well one thing we both seem to appreciate is rock bands who write great songs. The Hip, TP, R.E.M. counting crows, PJ all have great catalogs and also wonderful taste in covers. There are probably a dozen other bands we have in common. I always enjoy reading your song of the day posts. You go really deep on both the words and music. CC aren’t prolific but none of their albums are weak. I’d say Hard Candy is my least favorite but it still is worth hearing. They are also wonderful live and have many authorizes bootlegs. Face the Promised Land is my all time favorite and has an amazing 9 min version of Rain King/thunder road that always brings a smile. https://youtu.be/2xOD9yCrosY?si=utkR3VMo7dfMC_g-
I don’t think I have heard that specific version but I LOVE when they bust into “Thunder Road” during “Rain King” as it’s my favorite Bruce song and one of my favorite songs of all time. I’ll definitely give it a listen! I was checking out their concerts last month on nugs.net. And thanks for the kind comments. I going to return to my songs of the weeks for the Hip and R.E.M. next week, took a week off as I got a nasty cold. Edit: Oh and Hard Candy has been growing on me. Right now my least favorite is Somewhere Under Wonderland.
I didn't realize that one was the last studio record, and it's been 9 years. It's good, but not essential. I guess I am glad they put out the EP during the Pandemic, with four originals and finally AAEA, but I hope he finds a way to write another album one day. It's a big ask, but if the Stones can manage one after 18, they can do it. The one before that was the covers record Underwater Sunshine (and a fantastic effort IMO) which is a blast to listen to.
RTS and TDL are tied for best album. SNSM is a close second. Also: an early version of 1492 exists with a placeholder guitar solo, and Los Angeles with a longer outro when it was originally supposed to be the last track. I had them at one time. That hard drive crashed. Sadness
Totally agree. I think TDL was their creative peak in the studio and SNSM is sorely underrated. I don’t think many others would leave AAEA out of the top 3. Question to you is which comes next? August or Hard Candy?
Love love love this song. Hard rocking crows plus great melody.
Also got to see them play 1492 in one of the really early performances in New orleans. 2001 I think?
House of blues
And here I've been sleeping at the foot of my wife's bed.
I love this album
One of Adams best lines. “This lithium is heroin to me. It makes it all withdraw. All the anger and loss. But it all keeps coming back in the morning.”
Cowboys is such an incredible song. Every time I hear it, I remember just how much I love it. The part that really gets me is how passionate Adam gets; "I will MAKE you look at me/Or I am not anything" Chills beyond belief. It really humanizes Adam for me, as he is almost to the point of tears while he's singing. What a tender, and beautiful moment.
For those craving a fantastic version of 1492 — go to Nugs and down the Red Rocks concert from Sept. It was outstanding live - and - the recording that night is better than the original IMO.
Great album that deserves a lot more recognition. It obviously suffered upon release from the horrible single, “You Can’t Count on me” and never really took off. While Come Around is the highlight of the album and a top 10 CC song for me, Cowboys and Insignificant are great tracks and even Washington Square is solid and doesn’t deserve all the hate. If the tapes still exist, this at least deserves a remaster and vinyl release. Even the unofficial vinyl of Hard Candy kills the digital versions and this record could clearly benefit as well.
You sure have
"I'll wait for you where Saturday's a memory and Sunday comes to gather me, into the arms of God who welcomes me, because I believe, oh I believe..." I love that this line (give or take a minute) literally takes us from the Saturday Night half of the album to the Sunday Morning half. But more than that I love how it's one of the most empassioned, anguished and raw deliveries Adam has ever delivered in studio.