RATING:  4.5 / 5 stars

By Chris Moore:

In his personal liner notes, Adam Duritz thanks several people for “sticking by our vision for this album in the face of pretty much universal disapproval. Records SHOULD be what they’re MEANT to be.” In many ways, these notes help to tie Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings to the much larger tradition of the concept album.

Consider the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, arguably the first concept album. The Fab Four had to lock themselves away from all other distractions – including photo shoots and even live concert tours – to make what many consider to be their masterpiece. The Moody Blues were never meant to record Days of Future Passed; it was only as a result of convincing their producer to change course that this classic concept album was created. Brian Wilson arguably lost his mind in the pursuit of SMiLE, his masterpiece of an incomplete concept album that drew him back into the studio four decades later to finish it.

To compare this new Counting Crows album with the best of the Beatles, Moody Blues, and Beach Boys would be misguided; it is simply too recent to hold up to the classics. Still, this is one of the Counting Crows’ most compelling offerings and perhaps the strongest album of the year. Why, you ask? Not only do the songs shine – rocking and reflecting at the appropriate times – respectively, but the album concept unites each separate thread into a larger thought that holds up after and indeed invites multiple listens.

The album opens – rather, explodes – with the first track’s thundering drum roll and massive distortion guitar. “1492” is a personal narrative that establishes the setting and the narrator’s “dark Italian underground” exploits in a private world of “disco lights,” sexual encounters with “skinny girls,” and “mornings spreading out across the feathered thighs of angels.” Duritz’s songs have often shown interest in angelic imagery – consider his band’s first hit with “Angels of the Silences,” for one – but the imagery is tipped on its head for this album. Initially, the darkness is shocking. It is darkness that leads to the repeated question in the chorus, “Where do we disappear?” The narrator’s personal history becomes intertwined with an interesting take on Columbus and the events of 1492, a final chorus about the “people who impersonate our friends,” and then, with a final bang on the drums and harsh down stroke on the strings of the electric guitar, it’s over just as abruptly as it started.

The first half of the album is devoted to the Saturday Nights portion of the concept. The “dizzy life” that is described in “Hanging Tree” is further fleshed out in the scene-setting “Los Angeles,” and more personal details are divulged in “Sundays” – an opening mention of “coloured rubbers” followed by a description of the narrator’s conception (“My mother made me out of flesh and wine”) leads to the choral confession that he doesn’t believe in Sundays. Time and again on this first half of the album, the songs are rock n’ roll through and through; solos and driving beats are par for the course. And yet this is not at the expense of artistry. Duritz’s imagery is poetic and pulls no punches; the reference to Sundays conjures religious imagery, and although he professes not to believe in them, these tracks smack of a trip to a confessional.

The final two tracks of the Saturday Nights portion make good on the promise of “1492.” With “Insignificant,” he returns to that feeling of disappearance, declaring “I don’t want to be insignificant.” “Cowboys,” the sixth and final track of the first half, provides the perfect transition as Duritz sings, “I’ll wait for you as Saturday’s a memory, and Sunday comes to gather me into the arms of God Who’ll welcome me because I believe, oh, I believe…” This is a shift from his statements in “Sundays” and brings God directly into the picture. Duritz’s final words of the track set a mission statement of sorts for the remainder of the album – “Oh, I will make you look at me… Or I am not anything.”

So ends the Saturday Nights segment of the album; the Sunday Mornings portion begins with the subdued acoustic picking, gently fingered piano, and deliberately plucked standup bass of “Washington Square.” Harmonica and a distant electric guitar join the sound of the largely acoustic arrangement of “On Almost Any Sunday Morning.” The lyrics fit the tone of the music aptly, sparse and raw as they are. It is interesting to note that both of these tracks were written by Duritz alone, perhaps adding to the personal feel of these tracks.

Just as “Washington Square” and “On Almost Any Sunday Morning” are songs of despair and desolation, the next two tracks find the narrator beginning to pick up the pieces. In “When I Dream of Michelangelo” Duritz sings, “I want a white bread life, just something ignorant and plain, but from the walls of Michelangelo I’m dangling again.” In a sense, the conception of the album is explained through this song, even as the narrator sings of that connection to the great painter. This brings many aspects together, most notably the religious imagery and the desire of an artist to communicate. “Anyone But You” kicks off with a haunting organ and quickly falls under the domain of a steady drum beat. The message of this track? Well, although he admits “I’m almost ready – it’s almost true – for almost anyone but you,” he ends up returning repeatedly to the simple statement, “I think about you.”

It is in this song that the album really comes together. Even as drums return to the mix for the first time since the transition to the Sunday Mornings section, the singer’s dilemma is clear: after his wild “Saturday nights” and his reflections on his life, God, angels, women, and more, he can only think of this one unnamed woman.

In the next track, the truth comes clearly crashing down.

“You Can’t Count On Me,” the first single from Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, lays it all out there – the narrator clearly addresses that aforementioned woman (described here as “just my toy and I can’t stop playing with you, baby”), and he admits that “There’s just one thing you need to know and that’s that you can’t count on me.” Not exactly a declaration of love and selfless devotion, this clearly carries with it the same blatant, raw honesty that the previous tracks have been imbued with.

From the opening chords, “Le Ballet D’Or” plays out like a dream sequence characterized by Duritz’s reflections and realizations. These set up what is perhaps the most minimalist track on the album; Charlie Gillingham’s piano and Adam Duritz’s vocals are all that you get with “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam Long Ago.” The vocals, probably the most raw of the record, lead up to the ragged, repetitive pleading by Duritz – “Come back to me.”

The album might have left off on this note, leaving the resolution open ended and the final note a somber one. Instead, the next track begins deceptively with an acoustic guitar and piano that fade momentarily before being replaced by the first distortion guitar since “Cowboys” and perhaps the most rousing drum beat and bass line of the album. Duritz’s voice returns to form as he leads the band in “Come Around,” the only track on Sunday Mornings not produced by James Brown. Rather, this track was produced by Gil Norton, the producer for the six tracks of Saturday Nights.

Thus, “Come Around” effectively brings this concept full circle, promising in the chorus “We’ll still come around.” Yes, there is pain on the Sunday mornings…

But that won’t stop Duritz from coming back to the Saturday nights time and again. If nothing else, they certainly make for good songwriting – and this concept makes for a rocking, raw, and overall excellent album.

By Chris Moore:

RATING:  4.5 / 5 stars

Never before has such an excellent album been so universally scorned.

From the reviewers on down to the liner notes of the CD itself, every writer who has taken pen to paper in the name of The Beach Boys — perhaps better known to fans as “1985″ — has had much in the way of criticism and, at times, outright derision for what ended up being their last full-length studio album of predominantly original material.

Take it as another subtle disapproval when only one track from this year was included on the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys box set.

One track out of well over one hundred tracks.

The truth is that The Beach Boys sounds a bit dated, clearly a product of the eighties and the decade long flirtation with digital and synthesized sounds.  Andrew Doe, writer of both the liner notes for the album and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: The Complete Guide to their Music, claims that the decision to experiment with this technology “removed any sense of immediacy from the proceedings.”

He also has negative commentary to share for just about every track that I like.

As Doe is one of the few writers to take the time — or, certainly, to be paid — to review these tracks, it may be useful to revisit his sentiments.  In his mind, the Mike Love/Terry Melcher-penned “Getcha Back,” one of the true gems of this period, “has a curiously unfinished feel about it.”  Bruce Johnston’s heartfelt performance on “She Believes in Love Again” is “(unusually) less than silky smooth.”  Brian Wilson’s admittedly simple but — as the Laptop Sessions have proven — beautiful song “I’m So Lonely” is simply “in no way objectionable.” “Passing Friend,” the stronger of the two covers here, is described as “a second-string Culture Club discard [that] really isn’t appropriate, nor up to par.”  (Whereas the other cover, “I Do Love You,” is “good,” even if it’s “not the Beach Boys.”)

To be fair, “Where I Belong” gets the attention it deserves, although Doe overstates it a bit as “the undoubted album highlight.”  The other track that he endorses is “California Calling,” a perfectly enjoyable track that is nostalgic of classic early Beach Boys.  Predictably, Doe again overstates, writing “why this wasn’t a single is an eternal mystery.”

Herein lies the rub: that frustrating ever-present perception of the classic early Beach Boys sound.

The Beach Boys' "The Beach Boys" (1985)

For nearly two decades by this point, the Beach Boys had been suffering from commercial and critical expectations.  Anyone could understand why Smiley Smile fell disappointingly flat, but strong later releases — like the placid but endearing Friends and the masterpiece Sunflower — stalled in the triple digits on the charts.

Is it a coincidence that an album on which the Beach Boys experiment with new technology and stretch out beyond some of their more typical arrangements is so widely disdained?

I think not.

Consider for even a moment the runaway success of their subsequent album (more like an EP) Still Cruisin’ based on the merits of the crowd-pleasing “Kokomo” and in spite of the downright embarrassing “Wipe Out.”

When this band sings within the ranges of their image (i.e. anything related to summer, the beach, waves, sun, etc.), they are met with far more success than when they stretch out beyond the expected.

As for me, I can see beyond the eighties textures.  I don’t feel the compulsive need to value this music primarily in comparison to the other albums in the Beach Boys catalog; even if I did, it would hold up as one of the pillars, particularly post-Holland.  And I applaud the Beach Boys for rebounding from a tumultuous series of years that saw Carl temporarily quitting the band, Brian falling under the influence of Dr. Landy, and Dennis passing away, due to drowning.

Despite all the tension and tragedy, The Beach Boys is the combined effort of five adults still able to perform with positive energy, adding the element of uplift to nearly every track.  This album is host to what have become lost Beach Boys tracks, including excellent little numbers like “It’s Gettin’ Late,” the catchy “Crack at Your Love,” and the electric, rockin’ “Maybe I Don’t Know.”  And, as much as I like Keepin’ the Summer Alive (1980) for a spin or maybe two, this is the album I put on repeat for days at a time to kick off or to recharge my summer spirit each year.

Few may agree with me, but that’s okay.  The Beach Boys truly is the under-appreciated pinnacle of the Beach Boys final full decade as a band.  Not since Holland had they produced such a strong album, and they would sadly never match it again.

At this point, I’ve written all that can be communicated, and I’ll have to agree to disagree with the masses, tolerating “Kokomo” and loving The Beach Boys (1985).