I had forgotten how much I love the Counting Crows until I listened to their new album, Hard Candy (just released last week, I believe). Or I should say I had pushed the significance of their first album to the back of my mind. August and Everything After, which has perhaps the best initial four song sequence of any album, was released at an important time in my life. Everyone has (or should have) certain pieces of music that just speak to them, even if the reasons have as much or more to do with their lives than the notes on the record. The first Counting Crows album was that record for me. Adam Duritz’ lyrics and his plaintive, sometimes desperate delivery spoke to– and for– me. I knew what it was like to have to turn a love and life over… I knew what it was like to be sleepless at 4:30 a.m. and how it felt like it couldn’t get any worse… I knew the dead man inside my soul that was trying to get out. There was just enough desperation, just enough need, and just enough poetry in that album to make it a part of me. I still get chills listening to it, even though I have heard it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

Hard Candy is not that kind of album. It has its moments, and if anything Duritz’ lyrics are even closer to standing alone as good poetry than ever before… but the big leaps are gone, there isn’t much that really grabs my attention and keeps it, and nowhere does the album speak to me in the same way. Of course I too am different now, and the band is, I am sure, wealthy and more satisfied than they used to be. You can’t blame a band for any of that, but you can’t blame me for dreaming that they will be able to reach me in the same way again, either. I guess that is what keeps us listening to music!