Given the churning tides of fashion and fate, six years can often feel more like an eternity in pop music. Yet Counting Crows' first studio album since 2002 bristles with an urgent energy that makes their creative restlessness almost palpable. The Crows haven't so much reinvented their roots-conscious ethos here, as shrewdly divided it along the album title's thematic lines: "Saturday night is when you sin," explains singer Adam Durwitz "and Sunday is when you regret. Sinning is often done very loudly, angrily, bitterly, violently." Thus, the band indulges itself in a raucously loose-limbed opening half that freewheels from the snarling Gil Norton/Steve Lillywhite produced blast at betrayal "1492," through a Stones-y, left-handed country-rock ode to "Los Angeles," and the irony of "Sundays"' no less pop-savvy angst. That mood shifts dramatically with the opening acoustic guitar notes of the lovely "Washington Square," heralding a mood of reflective redemption that characterizes the album's closing chapter that showcases the band's potent folk sensibility via the earthy studio aura of Modest Mouse/Iron & Wine producer Brian Deck. If it's only half the long-rumored "unplugged" album so many Crows' fans have anticipated, Durwitz's ever soulful lyrical intrigues, the songs' far-ranging moods and adventurous sonic textures - which encompass the spare, haunting beauty of "Le Ballet d'Or," and even a little of Brian Wilson's harmonic glories on the close of "Anyone But You" - deliver so much more. --Jerry McCulley

With over 20 million albums sold worldwide, eight Top 5 singles, and three records that have broken the Top 5 on the Billboard 200, COUNTING CROWS are set to release their long awaited new album SATURDAY NIGHTS & SUNDAY MORNINGS. The record is the Crows' first studio album in almost 5 years, since the release of Hard Candy in 2002.

Counting Crows Photos

More from Counting Crows

August and Everything After [DELUXE EDITION]

New Amsterdam: Live at Heineken Music Hall

Films About Ghosts: The Best Of...

Hard Candy

This Desert Life

Across A Wire: Live In New York City

Recovering the Satellites

August and Everything After

UK edition of the 2008 album from Adam Duritz and the boys features one bonus track: 'Baby I'm A Big Star Now'. This is, an album that embraces the menacing vibes of Saturday Night and the more contemplative moments of a Sunday morning. Saturday Nights, the album's angry, electric, dissolute opening salvo was produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies, Foo Fighters), a longtime friend and associate of the band who previously produced their second album Recovering The Satellites. Sunday Mornings, the more acoustic and Folk-influenced side of the album was produced by Brian Deck whose past credits include Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine. Features the single 'You Can't Count On Me'.

It took me a few plays to connect to the music. I am an enthusiast and can really understand lyrics. I purchased their '93 CD August and Everything After. They are a talented group.

August and everything After is the disc that sold Counting Crows to us. It is the album that made us believers. Adam and the guys spent their whole lives up to that point, making that album. Their other albums have been made in far less time. The ideas are not lifelong. So give them a break on that. If you want another AAEA buy AAEA or wait another thirty years. Rememeber, these guys are artists it doesn't come that easily.

All that aside, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a great album. If it was a debut, it would be a brilliant debut. However it is from a band that we have already declared as brilliant. SNASM is as good if not a better record than AAEA. Forget the nostalgia and just listen to the subject matter, lyrics, clarity of expression and eloquence of delivery of "Anyone but you","When I dream of Michaelangelo" and "On Almost Any Sunday Morning". "You can't count on me" is classic post-self-denial material(maybe Rolling Stones influence?). "Come around" speaks of a band conscious of its own mortality and immortality. Take a good listen. This one is a keeper.

The Truth About Myra

Most of the music I listen to is from the 60's and 70's so I still consider The Counting Crows to be a "New Band".They are one of the few Bands around today who have not compromised their music as an art form.They get a lot of crap for not making another "August and Everything After".Bob Dylan was knocked to for not making another "Highway 61 Revisited" as well.I believe Adam Duritz has, and still continues to improve as both a songwriter and performer.Just because an artist goes in a diffirent direction does not automatically mean they are less relevant then they were before.I think this album is very strong and more importantly a very honest expression of "The Counting Crows" as a group.It does not sound forced.It sounds like music made by a group who will continue to work at what they do with no end in sight.The Crows/ Adam Duritz seems to be carrying "The Torch" of what true American Music is all about.Quite a feat for a modern band in popular music.I hope they continue doing what they do,whatever that may be.

I have every one of their CD's because I really like this group. However this CD didn't do anything for me.

I hate admitting this because I've been a Counting Crows fan since... well since "August...". But this CD is so bland I couldn't get into it at all.

I gave it chance after chance... listen after listen. None of the songs ever stuck in my head. I found the music to be old hat, but not in a classic, good way. And the lyrics were terribly weak. They've lost all feeling. One of the things that has always made CC a good band was that the lyrics were usually raw and filled with emotion. This CD sounds like they didn't put anything of themselves in it. Its almost as if they're just performing songs that other people wrote as parodies of counting crows songs.

This is the first Counting Crows Cd i took out of my rotation before I knew the order of songs by memory. It just hurt every time i tried to listen.

as they say... All good things...