Sydney Opera House
Tuesday April 9, 2013 :
I’m well aware of how dorky it is to be a passionate and avid fan of Counting Crows. Adam Duritz has been dressing like a homeless man and moaning about his broken heart for twenty years, and over that period of time, the Californian seven-piece have staged exactly zero attempts at reinvention. But do you know what?
Fuck it. They’re excellent.
Counting Crows haven’t needed to reinvent themselves because the formula works so well: well-written love songs, arranged out the wazoo, played by musicians who genuinely listen to each other on stage. This was my third time seeing the band – and twice in as many weeks – and I’m starting to feel more and more okay about admitting it.
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House was a strange setting for a rock band of the Crows’ magnitude. Duritz claimed it was on his bucket list of venues, and for good reason, but it was an odd feeling to be listening to arguably one of the biggest rock bands of the past 20 years in a seated theatre. With this said, it did mean that there were absolutely no issues with sound, which was pristine the entire evening.
The band came alive in their performances, reworking and improvising new sections to old songs throughout the 90-minute set. As they’re known to, Duritz and co. would routinely break off from the recorded song structures of their album cuts and extend them, often with new lyrics sung stream-of-conscious by the Crows’ dreadlocked frontman. Early hits ‘Round Here’ and ‘Rain King’ were both given this treatment, stretching their original four-or-so minutes out into ten-plus minute jams. For the most part, these felt inspired and lively rather than drawn-out and unnecessary.
Other set highlights came in the form of more unexpected cuts. The band produced the synth-poppy ‘New Frontier’ from 2002’s Hard Candy, as well as the Courtney-Cox inspired ‘Monkey’ from Recovering the Satellites (1998), neither of which they’re known to perform on a high rotation, to great appreciation from the crowd. Other numbers were expected but nonetheless well-executed: ‘A Long December’ rang out a chorus of “Na na na na, na na na na na na na na yeah” across the Concert Hall, while ‘Colourblind’ may have been the set’s most understatedly gorgeous moment.
With this said, they weren’t all zingers. The band’s cover of Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Start Again’ felt a bit flat despite big harmonies, and ‘Mercury’ from Recovering The Satellites was sleepy toward the end of the set. It was also a bit of a disappointment that Duritz and co. couldn’t find time for a single rendition from 2008’s excellent Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, which may be my favourite Crows record.
This, however, was not to sour what was in all a rousing performance from a band who are still at the top of their game. In an age where so many acts are writing sounds instead of writing songs, Counting Crows provided a timely reminder that often, the best and most direct path to success is to write great, honest music, and to play it with reckless abandon.
Reviewer: Max Quinn
Photographer: David Jackson
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