Pawtucket, RI(Newspaper Review), August 24, 2007 Options

[SJN1279]

http://www.projo.com/music/content/COUNTRE...8U.326d492.html

"New twists help Counting Crows soar


PAWTUCKET — You have to hand it to an established band such as the Counting Crows that opens with a gentle, mostly acoustic, unreleased song, as they did last night at McCoy Stadium.

“When I Dream of Michelangelo,” from the forthcoming album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, was one of several new songs the Crows trotted out last night, and they weren’t the end of the reinventions.

The piano-accordion arrangement of the opening of “A Long December,” with its reworked vocal melody, was a nice touch, and the version of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” stuck in the middle of “Rain King,” were also highlights of the show before an announced crowd of 8,256.

Extra
Your Turn: What did you think of the show?
Lolling around the stage, occasionally drawing patterns with his hands, frontman Adam Duritz’s performance fit the journal-style lyrics. (“I know she is not my friend,” he sang on “When I Dream of Michelangelo”; “Could you tell me one thing you remember about me?,” goes “Have You Seen Me Lately?”)

Last night in the summer-fun setting, the Crows’ formula worked better on clangorous versions of “Have You Seen Me Lately?,” their 1993 breakout hit “Mr. Jones” and the joyous new “Come Around,” as well as elegantly rocking songs such as “Hard Candy,” “Rain King” and the first encore, “Time and Time Again.” Quieter, melodically meandering songs such as “Anna Begins” and “Perfect Blue Buildings” had the positive (comfy) and negative (sleepy) characteristics of a warm bath. Still, Duritz’s willingness to let it all hang out was, and is, often compelling.

Live, who preceded the Crows, swung for the fences, with life-or-death subject matter and delivery. Singer Ed Kowalczyk prowled the stage like an existentially troubled messiah, dispensing heartfelt yet carefully non-specific spirituality on songs such as “Lakini’s Juice,” “Heaven” and “The Dolphin’s Cry” and leading a chant of “Love!” as a karmic offering to Iraq during “I Alone.”

Collective Soul opened the show with a taped National Anthem, a hearty “Play Ball!” and their trademark, if rather standard, ’90s rock. Their songwriting aesthetic mainly fit meandering fractions of melody in between guitar hooks both brawny (“Better Now”) and acoustic (“The World I Know”). The new songs “Hollywood” and “All That I Know,” from their latest album (coming out Tuesday), were tuneful, catchy exceptions — good signs for the future. And of course, they wrapped with their “one-hit wonder of 1994” (singer Ed Roland’s words), “Shine.”