Review: Counting Crows – Recovering the Satellites

Craig Manning Oct 15, 2021

Few trends scream “nineties” more loudly than the “rebellion against fame” album. Nirvana made In Utero. Pearl Jam made Vitalogy. R.E.M. made Monster. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a rock band ever becoming famous enough in the mainstream to then justify the creation of a “rebellion against fame” album. For awhile there, though, making this type of album—usually a louder, more abrasive follow-up to a cleaner, more tasteful, massively successful predecessor—was a rock ‘n’ roll rite of passage. Few bands ever steered into the skid quite as much as Counting Crows did on Recovering the Satellites.

It’s difficult, from the vantage point of 2021’s pop music status quo, to describe how absolutely massive Counting Crows were in the mid-90s. The band’s debut, 1993’s August & Everything After, is certified seven-times platinum in the United States and has sold well north of 10 million copies worldwide. The flagship single, “Mr. Jones,” made it to number 2 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart. Ironically, “Mr. Jones” was a song about wanting to be famous; to be “big, big stars.” “When I look at the television I wanna see me/Staring right back at me,” frontman Adam Duritz sang in the song.

Be careful what you wish for, Adam.

Craig Manning Oct 8, 2021

Sometimes you can lose something that is still right there in front of you. A city you called home; a person who once felt as close to you as the wind on your face; a chapter of your life that still seems fresh in your memory, even if it’s long gone. These are the people and places and things that seem to form the beating heart of Noah Gundersen’s sublime fifth album, called A Pillar of Salt. It’s an album about bright little lost things; about flickers of memory so vivid that they seem like they’re happening now; of recollections or fragments of dreams that hurt like a dagger in your side because they remind you how much things have changed. Gundersen has always been good at conveying that type of loss: Of writing songs about lost loves that feel like cigarette smoke in your chest, or of capturing the very rhythm of autumn in his words and music. But it’s possible he’s never assembled a set of songs as stunningly beautiful and as disarmingly visceral as the 11 tracks that make up A Pillar of Salt. It’s an album that blindsides you, and that might just leave you gasping for air. I have not been able to go more than 24 hours without listening to it since I first heard it three weeks ago.

Craig Manning Sep 7, 2021

Brian Fallon didn’t NEED to make Elsie. By the time this album arrived – the one and only record Fallon made with the side project he dubbed The Horrible Crowes – Fallon was already well on his way to rock star status…or, at least, it seemed that way at the time. His full-time band, The Gaslight Anthem, had released three albums and an EP in the space of three years and about two weeks – a remarkable run that saw the band gaining ground with each release. By the time Elsie arrived in September 2011, there was already buzz brewing about Gaslight Anthem LP4, and about how that album had the potential to launch Fallon and company into a whole new stratosphere. Just about anyone else would have taken a well-deserved break. Based on the exhaustion that would eventually crash The Gaslight Anthem, maybe Fallon should have. Instead, he teamed up with his guitar tech, Ian Perkins, and made one of the great left-turn albums in 21st century rock ‘n’ roll. Some days, I think it might just be his masterpiece.

Craig Manning Aug 18, 2021

“I never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town.”

When Brandon Flowers sang those words back in 2006, he completed a rock ‘n’ roll rite of passage: that of penning a great escapist anthem. The album he was working on at the time, the sophomore Killers LP Sam’s Town, was in part an homage to Bruce Springsteen, so it made sense for there to be a song like “Read My Mind” that channeled some of the pulling-out-of-here-to-win energy of Born to Run. When Flowers sang that song, you could hear in his voice the yearning to get out and find something better. You didn’t know where he was going, but you felt like he was probably never coming back.

Craig Manning Jul 22, 2021

Some songs just linger in the cultural bloodstream. It’s impossible to predict, in the moment, which songs those will be. Occasionally, it’s the big hits, but it’s also often those same world-conquering smashes that end up sounding the most dated in retrospect. Usually, you have to wait years or even decades to see which songs have truly become songbook classics, once all the context and narrative and hype and promotion has drifted into distant memory. You have to get to the point where all that remains is the song itself and the mysterious, beguiling hold it somehow continues to have over people.

There’s a spectacular cover band in my hometown that mostly plays songs from the classic rock era. It’s not hard to see why: Those songs have been proven staples for so long that building a setlist around them is just a smart business decision. You can’t miss with “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “American Girl.” You can’t miss with The Beatles or The Stones. There are precisely two post-2000 songs that I remember regularly hearing in the setlist from this particular cover band. The first one was “Mr. Brightside.”

The second was “The Middle.”

Craig Manning Jul 16, 2021

I’m not sure I have ever needed an album more than I needed War Paint.

Sometimes, as a music fan, you lean on the records you love to help get you through things: breakups; losing loved ones; navigating huge tectonic shifts in your life; global pandemics. As someone whose love for music springs from an extremely emotional place, I have leaned on a lot of different albums over the years, for a lot of different reasons.

But even in that context, War Paint, the sophomore LP from Baltimore-based rock band The Dangerous Summer, was an album I needed. I needed it so badly that I listened to it more times in July and August 2011 than I have ever listened to any other album in a two-month span. It was the rhythm of my days and nights; the heartbeat of my dreams; the soundtrack of my summer. To this day, I can’t think of a single thing that happened that season without also remembering the songs on War Paint. For me, that time in my life and this album will always be inextricably intertwined, as if they were hardwired together.

Craig Manning Jun 17, 2021

Bon Iver, Bon Iver sounds like a summer storm. A muggy June evening; temperatures that hang suspended in the mid-70s, even after the sun goes down; heat lightning flashing on the horizon; and then, eventually, a torrential downpour, crashes of thunder, strikes of lightning too close for comfort.

Or maybe I just think this album sounds like all those things, because that happened to be the environment in which I first heard it. The night Bon Iver, Bon Iver leaked on the internet, weeks ahead of its June 21, 2011 release date, it was pouring in northern Michigan. When I first heard “Perth,” it felt like someone was taking the weather outside and translating it into music. The far-off guitar notes felt like the first flickers of lightning on the horizon. Vernon’s multi-tracked, harmony-backed voice, when it breaks through the waves about 45 seconds in, evoked the gentle drizzle of the storm’s start. And then, the crescendo: a martial drumbeat, a wash of horns, the guitar sparking louder and louder. The song builds until it sounds like a furious storm—the rain clattering against your windowpane, the thunder rattling the glasses in the cabinets, the lightning flashing so quickly that it seems to illuminate the entire outside world for minutes at a time. Soon, the song subsides, burns itself out. It fades to nothing as quickly as it exploded— just as a summer storm eventually crashes away.

Craig Manning Mar 22, 2021

These days, bands don’t really break up: they go on hiatus. Occasionally, you’ll get a band separating more deliberately – doing or saying or writing something that makes it clear this break is meant to be permanent. More often, though, bands just stay dormant until they want to do it all over again – the recording sessions, and the press interviews, and the grueling tours – and then they reconvene. From Fall Out Boy to My Chemical Romance to Blink-182 and beyond, this narrative has played out repeatedly in our little music scene over the years. 10 years ago this week, it happened with Yellowcard.

Yellowcard are unique in that they’ve had both types of endings: the temporary one, with a hiatus designed as an indefinite time away from the music industry; and the permanent one, with a proper send-off album and farewell tour. When the band announced their hiatus in April of 2008, though, most fans probably would have bet on that being the period at the end of the sentence. “It doesn’t have anything to do with turmoil in the band,” frontman Ryan Key said at the time. “It’s more of a…[we’re] facing adulthood now, and we can’t stay in Neverland forever. I think we just need a break.” The Peter Pan reference? The suggestion that rock ‘n’ roll is a young man’s game? The exhaustion that seemed to permeate the last sentence? These ingredients did not bode well for the return of America’s favorite violin-toting pop-punk band.

Craig Manning Jan 25, 2021

Has any artist ever thrown down the gauntlet at the beginning of a year quite like Adele did with 21? Arriving on January 24, 2011 (in the United Kingdom, that is; it hit shelves in the States a month later), 21 quickly became not just the defining musical blockbuster of that year, but also of the still-young decade. No album since has had the same impact on the music world, or the world as a whole. 21 briefly made it feel like no one had ever heard another breakup album before. The mythology around the album (“Who broke Adele’s heart?” was a common question), along with the strength of the songs, made for a moment in music history that was genuinely monocultural. These days, it seems like there’s nothing everyone can share as common ground – period, let alone musically. 21 was different: a true four-quadrant classic that had something for everyone. From the pop music stans to the music critics to the songwriting classicists, Adele checked every box. Looking back, it feels like the last album that everyone could agree on. In terms of cultural significance, chart dominance, Grammy chances, and a million other metrics, every other artist who released something in 2011 was competing for second place.

While 21 dropped in January. I have never thought of it as a “winter” album. One of the (many) disadvantages to being a broke college student living in an outdated dorm in the winter of 2011 was that you had no good method to hear the latest music as it was breaking. Spotify hadn’t launched in the U.S. yet, paying for downloads via iTunes (or driving somewhere to buy a CD) wasn’t in the budget, and pirating music over the ethernet-only internet connection was both slow as hell and risky. That’s why I often went months without hearing the music that everyone else was talking about, 21 included. In this particular case, though, the delay proved to be serendipitous.

Craig Manning Dec 14, 2020

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Taylor Swift’s folklore was one of 2020’s few saving graces. For myself and many other Taylor fans, the songs on that album were a salve to sooth some of the heartbreak and disappointment of this year. Even the discourse around the songs was a welcome distraction from all the bad things happening around us. That the album would never have come to exist, likely in any form, without the pandemic is one of the only positives in this remarkably net-negative hellscape we’ve been living in since March. So when Taylor announced that she’d be dropping a sequel album called evermore last Thursday, it felt a bit like lightning striking twice. The first album was a sepia-toned autumnal beauty shot through with the wistful strains of a dying summer—in 2020’s case, a lost summer. Released two weeks out from what could be the loneliest Christmas many people ever experience, evermore promised to be folklore’s wintry twin: a cold-weather soundtrack full of snow-strewn backdrops, frosty windows, and solitary reflections. Taylor positioned the album as her gift to everyone else for her 31st birthday, but it’s more like alternative Christmas music in a year when playing the usual celebratory Christmas tunes seems bizarre or even profane. Tis the damn season, folks, and Taylor Swift is here to get you through it.

Craig Manning Nov 13, 2020

Chris Stapleton, it seems, has little interest in being famous. Five years on from the CMA Awards team-up with Justin Timberlake that made Stapleton a superstar, he’s yet to cash in on his A-list status in any of the significant way, barring perhaps playing concerts in bigger rooms. His follow-up to 2015’s Traveller could have been gargantuan. He easily could have called in another favor from Timberlake for a guest feature, and you have to assume that other famous pop stars, country stars, songwriters, and producers were lining up to work with him. Yet, rather than deliver a bid for crossover success, Stapleton dropped a pair of albums that were, essentially, b-side collections. From A Room: Vol. 1 and From A Room: Vol. 2, released roughly six months apart in 2017, were made up of covers and songs that Stapleton had written during his long career as a writer for a Nashville publishing agency. The songs didn’t grapple with Stapleton’s newfound fame, nor did they really push any boundaries in terms of sonics or structure. Instead, both records played like low-stakes almost-demo collections, with spartan production, no notable features, and no-frills production from Dave Cobb, the same guy who’d sat behind the boards for Traveller.

Craig Manning Oct 29, 2020

All That You Can’t Leave Behind is not the best U2 album. The Joshua Tree is greater and grander. Achtung Baby is more innovative and more daring. War has more to say. I can see reasonable arguments for preferring most of the U2 catalog over this record—and frankly, many U2 fans do. Even the band’s non-Achtung ‘90s albums—the experimental, occasionally brilliant, occasionally baffling pair of Zooropa and Pop—tend to garner more praise from the average U2 fan than their 2000 comeback. And yet, despite all the criticisms thrown at All That You Can’t Leave Behind—that it’s too safe; that it effectively ends U2’s legacy as a chance-taking band; that it’s as top-heavy as any 2000s record give or take a Hot Fuss—it’s also, by far, the U2 album I reach for most. The Joshua Tree is my go-to favorite, and Achtung is the one I love thinking about most, but All That You Can’t Leave Behind has an advantage over both: something about it just feels like home.

Craig Manning Oct 23, 2020

At this point, you don’t get a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band project without questions about it being the last one. That’s actually been the case for years: when Springsteen and company closed out their 1999-2000 reunion tour at Madison Square Garden with a special extended version of “Blood Brothers,” it felt remarkably final. Nine years later, when The Boss concluded the Working on a Dream tour with a full-circle performance of his debut album, 1973’s Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, a common topic of conversation in the Springsteen fan community was about whether we’d ever get another E Street tour. The band came back in 2012—sans late sideman Clarence Clemons—for a tour supporting Springsteen’s then-new LP Wrecking Ball, and came back again in 2016 to play 1980’s double-LP masterpiece The River in full night after night. At the end of each tour, the question resurfaced: was this the last dance? The ensuing years only gave credence to the idea that it might be, as Springsteen penned his memoir, spent more than year on Broadway, and circled back to old songs for last year’s solo Western Stars. Each of these projects was wrought with ruminations about fading youth, aging, and mortality. Bruce wrote and spoke extensively about Clemons, whose death in 2011 clearly shook him to the core. On Stars, he closed the album with “Moonlight Motel,” his most aching look back at the past, and at the little glories of youthful freedom and young love that can’t quite ever be replicated or recaptured.

Craig Manning Oct 22, 2020

Speak Now is the most pivotal album in the Taylor Swift discography. It’s not the one that started the story (2006’s self-titled debut) or the one that made her a global superstar (2008’s Fearless), nor is it her biggest album (2014’s 1989) or her straight-up best (2012’s Red). But it was on Speak Now where Swift took full control of her creative enterprise, came into her own as a songwriter, and established many of the key elements that would ground her career for the next decade. It also might be the album that, more than any other, sets the table for the next 10 years of country music, from the pop influences to the confessional style of songwriting. It is, in a word, a landmark.

Swift, unlike many mainstream country stars, was always a songwriter first and foremost. Her debut self-titled record dropped when she was just 16 years old, but she still had writing credits on all 11 songs (and wrote three of them solo, including the number-one country smash “Our Song”). On Fearless, she more than doubled that number, taking solo writing credits on seven of the 13 songs (including “Love Story,” which briefly became the best-selling country single of all time). Still, Swift racked up a lot of co-writes on those first two albums, particularly with veteran Nashville songwriter Liz Rose, who has 12 writing credits across Taylor Swift and Fearless. On Speak Now, the big selling point isn’t that it’s a concept album about wild romance and dramatic heartbreak (Red), or a leap into pop (1989), or a rejoinder to her haters (Reputation), or her “indie” record (folklore). No, the big selling point here is the simple fact that Swift wrote all 14 tracks by herself.

Craig Manning Sep 28, 2020

I have fallen in love with a disproportionately large number of my favorite albums in cars. Riding in cars, sleeping in cars, driving in cars, singing in cars. 15-minute drives to school in cars and cross-country road trips in cars. Nighttime drives with no other cars on the road and gridlocked rush hour drives with hundreds of other cars on the road. Hot-as-hell summer drives in cars and cold-as-ice winter drives in cars that were slipping and sliding down snow-covered roads. Celebratory “turn the music up” moments in cars with friends, and long, lonely, sad solo drives in cars with nothing but the music and my own thoughts to keep me company. There is something about being in transit in an automobile that makes music sound better, and it’s something that can’t be replicated on a boat, or a plane, or a train, or a subway, or a city bus. It’s the combination of the small space and the big sound, of the endless scenery flying by outside the window and the tiny self-contained environment of the vehicle. The right car ride can make a good album sound great and a great album sound immaculate. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my fondest years of musical discovery align directly with the years where I spent the most time in cars.

Review: Counting Crows – Recovering the Satellites

Review: Noah Gundersen – A Pillar of Salt

Review: The Horrible Crowes – Elsie

Review: The Killers – Pressure Machine

Review: Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American

Review: The Dangerous Summer – War Paint

Review: Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Review: Yellowcard – When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes

Review: Adele – 21

Review: Taylor Swift – Evermore

Review: Chris Stapleton – Starting Over

Review: U2 – All That You Can’t Leave Behind

Review: Bruce Springsteen – Letter to You

Review: Taylor Swift – Speak Now

Review: Jimmy Eat World – Invented