Volume 67, Issue 4

Hard Candy That Just Won’t Go Bad
by Josh R. Becker

“On certain Sundays in November, when the weather bothers me, I empty drawers of other summers, where my shadows used to be…,” belts out Jewish vocalist Adam Duritz from under his dreads, at the start of his band’s new album, Hard Candy. This Baltimorean Berkeley graduate “just wants to have a good time,” and did, while writing this fourth studio album of his band, the Counting Crows. This great album has something for everyone, and, whether you’ve heard these guys before or not, Hard Candy, produced for the first time by Steve Lillywhite (DMB, Guster), is by far the band’s most optimistic and entertaining album, with fast, up-beat songs that are especially good for the road.

The album’s first hit single, “American girls,” exemplifies the buoyant tone of the rest of the songs, as does the band’s early material from even before its first album (i.e. “Einstein on the Beach”). Songs like “Richard Manuel is dead,” “Hard Candy,” “New Frontier,” and “Why Should you Come When I Call?” show the bands new desire to just have fun and stop trying to be overly profound. We saw from the sales of the band’s last album, This Desert Life, that misery loves company. Well, now the Crows don’t love misery, so they turn to Hard Candy.

In accordance with album’s various references to places like New York, Long Island, China, Spain, Mexico, Barcelona, New Orleans, and the pervasive mentioning of California, Adam’s lyrics talk of the world at large. “New Frontier” expounds on the plasticity of the world and how hard it is to get “from the outside of everything, to the inside of you.” “Black and Blue” is a beautiful song about the fragility of people, emphasizing the acceptability of the occasional and often necessary lapse. Thereafter, we are lifted up with the track that formed from the inspiring story of Adam returning to his dorm room in Berkeley one night to read in the paper that Richard Manuel, of The Band, had just died. Hence the track “R. Manuel is Dead,” about how life just passes you by, so live every moment to the fullest. Despite these lyrics, though, the album sounds, and is, extremely happy and cheerful overall – definitely a “New Frontier” for these Crows.

Though the album’s depth is superficial at best, it wouldn’t be a real Counting Crows album without at least a small amount of Adam’s reflective, whiny piano songs (which are always the best). This is where “Goodnight L.A.” and “Black and Blue” (both mine and pianist Charlie’s favorites) come in. Also, for the first time, the band brings in horns, violas, mandolins, sitars, various string instruments to make the music much more complete and variegated. These elements are brought to life in the tracks “MIAMI” and the popular “Butterfly in Reverse.” Finally, the record’s ‘last’ song, “Holiday in Spain,” will definitely be a favorite, beautifully tying up the album for a last dose of Hard Candy. On the other hand, maybe if you search hard enough, a fourteenth flavor could be found…the aftertaste of something written long ago…

Speaking of aftertastes, “Hard Candy” is also very much about memory. “Hard Candy is memory,” explains Adam, “this sweet thing that you can relive, but it hurts, especially in this case. It’s just the same hard candy that you’re remembering again.”

So the warm, bohemian acoustics of the Crows first record, “August and Everything After,” the mysterious darkness of their second and greatest masterpiece, “Recovering the Satellites,” and the painful ‘wandering of the soul’ of “This Desert Life,” lead up to this animated, upbeat, happy, shall we say…ending? Well, this is far from the end; as long as these guys are living, we could expect great music for many years to come.♦

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