Counting Crows – Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!

The lyrics of Dutch band Bløf often lead to amusing discussions and even parodies, but fans and critics agree on one thing: the band from the Netherlands doesn’t hide its poetic aspirations. That Bløf found kindred spirits in the American Counting Crows was almost an organic given: it had to be, like two brothers being reunited. One of the brothers was adopted and spoke a different language, but they understood each other flawlessly. Together, they recorded “Holidays in Spain,” originally from the album “Hard Candy.” The band from the Netherlands added some Dutch passages that were just as open to multiple interpretations as the original lyrics. ‘There are aeroplane seats, millions of ulterior motives.’ Many decided: it sounds beautiful, but it’s gibberish. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with gibberish. In poetry, a genre has even been created around this: atonal poetry, where abstraction in language is the goal in itself. Lucebert was the absolute grandmaster of atonal poetry.

Undaunted by brain drain the smooth talker
Jumps from nest to bird and continues delightedly
To spoon in the spaghetti of glossolalia

So said Lucebert.

Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz naturally cannot be compared to one of the greatest poets of the Fifties movement, but the lyrics of the rockers from the San Francisco Bay Area often lead to quite a bit of discussion. For instance, there has been a debate going on for weeks about “Spaceman in Tulsa,” the first single from the new album “Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!” Is that text about abuse? Or prostitution? According to Duritz, it’s about transformation, about how music can destroy someone, but also give new hope.

Doesn’t anybody wanna be a rock and roll queen?
Leave ’em laughing when you wanna die
Crazy little dreamer says, “Man, I can’t believe I’m still alive”

But what’s the deal with Tulsa? It’s a medium-sized city in Oklahoma, mainly known for its rich presence of oil. The place is regularly referenced in lyrics, such as in “Tulsa Time,” made famous in versions by country legend Don Williams and later Eric Clapton. In that song, the protagonist is on his way to fulfilling a big dream, but the conclusion quickly becomes that nobody is waiting for him or that dream. It’s a recurring theme in Counting Crows’ oeuvre: the loneliness of the disillusioned person who must start again, must abandon the dream and return home, ultimately to a better version of themselves. Yes, that was also the theme in “Holidays in Spain.”

It goes deep. We’ve had to wait ten years for this, as the band’s last studio album – “Somewhere Under Wonderland” – dates from 2014. This “Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!” is the follow-up to the EP “Butter Miracle, Suite One” that was released in 2021 and included four tracks: “The Tall Grass,” “Angel of 14th Street,” “Elevator Boots,” and “Bobby and the Rat-Kings.” Together, these songs formed “Suite One,” which is now supplemented with five new songs, or, better said, the suite is now preceded by five new songs. “With Love from A-Z” is the opening, and immediately we are drawn into the melancholy that this group has a patent on, not least because of Duritz’s vocal tone that always sounds as if he could burst into tears at any moment. ‘I was trying to swim in an ocean of rain. I was hoping to see California again,’ Duritz begins the album. Beautiful lyrics. That’s not the issue. No one can sing about emptiness, loneliness, and homesickness so beautifully.

Yet this “Butter Miracle” does not seem to live up to all expectations after ten years of absence. Even more so: it certainly won’t match the success of “August and Everything After,” “Recovering The Satellites,” or “Hard Candy.” It’s not because of the philosophical lyrics. No, musically, the album simply offers too little. “With Love from A-Z” is a standard blues, nothing more, nothing less. “Spaceman in Tulsa” is a good, almost upbeat rock song with a catchy chorus. The same applies to “Boxcars,” built on one nice riff. The new single “Under the Aurora” sounds good, partly due to the addition of strings, but it doesn’t rise above the level of a (better) pop song, which is really below this band’s standard. The whole thing doesn’t make enough of an impression.

Of the five new songs, there is only one that can stand in the shadow of classics like “A Long December” or “Goodnight Elisabeth,” and that is “Virginia Through the Rain.” We follow the person who lives in the song, put on our shoes, walk into the rain, away from the hotel, while Duritz sings that one line we can still cherish for months, years, so beautiful: ‘The sun undresses the horizon.’ Finally, another song where memories wrapped in melancholy under that thick blanket of suffocating homesickness and despair fly to our throats. These are the Counting Crows we want to hear, including poetic gibberish. However, it remains just one song.

All in all, Counting Crows delivers an album that sounds somewhat uninspired here and there. And that is nothing less than a disappointment after a decade of waiting. “Virginia Through the Rain” makes up for a lot, but not everything. (6/10) (BMG)