The first jangling guitar chords soon became as familiar as an old friend. After commercial breaks on radio stations nationwide, their sounds provoked smiles from everyone from teenyboppers prying into their rock 'n roll souls to yuppies reliving the earnestness of the sixties. Car windows were rolled down, and voices everywhere during the summer of 1993 sang "Mr. Jones" with all of their might. A modern rock classic was born, and the Counting Crows were introduced to America with August and Everything After.
The album introduced a down-home blend of rock that was immediately catchy and likeable, with sing-out-loud choruses - but that's not why fans latched onto the Crows wherever they went. Their secret weapon, although many were not aware, lay behind a pile of unkempt dreadlocks, owned by lead vocalist Adam Duritz. He took charge of all writing duties as well, and if not for him, the band might have easily faded into one-hit wonder status, forever likened to greats like Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen, but never carving a personality of its own.
A listen to the rest of August speaks to the contrary. What we have here is poetry, laden with fantastic imagery and set to music - a disc where every song is engaging because each one weaves in and out of a story that begs for understanding. There are no minced words, no flippant choruses. Take lines like this, from "A Murder of One": "There's a bird that nests inside you/sleeping underneath your skin/When you open up your wings to speak/I wish you'd let me in," or, from "Omaha," "Start running the banner down/ Drop past the color come up through the summer rain/Start turning the girl into the ground/Roll a new life over," and we're talking a record that stimulates the eyes as much as the ears.
Mix this with Duritz's distinctive vocal sound, and one of the great mainstream rock bands of the '90s is born.
Its feel is apparent from the moment the tinny opening notes of "Round Here" give way to Duritz's voice: "Step out the front door like a ghost/into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white." Pretentious? Maybe. But from the earnestness of Duritz's sometimes-whiny voice, you can tell that he means it.
For some people, maybe a bit too much. The Counting Crows have always had a stigma attached to them, one that contains the taint of wimpy, whiny, self-indulgent blathering. If all the tracks on August sounded like the wasteful and unimaginative "Time and Time Again," the band would doubtlessly deserve this stigma. Instead, it's tempered by love songs like the virtually flawless emotional roller coaster "Anna Begins" ("And everytime she sneezes/I think it's love/And oh, Lord/I'm not ready for this sort of thing"), and the feel-good, all out rocker, "Rain King".
When Duritz proclaims "I am the Rain King" he believes it. He wants you to believe it. And that's what makes August so likeable.
