Go Somewhere And Then Come Back: Adam Duritz On Counting Crows' 'Somewhere Under Wonderland'
Friday, 19 September 2014
Written by Simon Ramsay
They may have crafted a wonderful catalogue of material and been an exceptional touring outfit for over two decades, but Counting Crows have always struggled to match the critical acclaim afforded to their 1993 debut, 'August And Everything After'. Until now.
With their new album racking up its share of praise, we caught up with singer Adam Duritz to discuss the making of 'Somewhere Under Wonderland', their November UK shows and why Elvis Presley's CV may lead to aliens invading earth.
In terms of mood, 'Somewhere Under Wonderland' is vastly different to your last album of original material, the rather bleak 'Saturday Nights And Sunday Mornings'. It feels much more positive.
Well, I think anything would have been a pretty big shift after 'Saturday Nights...'. I don't know if it's a positive record, but I enjoyed making it. In that sense 'Saturday....' is the same as 'Somewhere Under Wonderland'. It's us making records about how we felt, and we felt differently, so the records are very different. That's a very angry, dark album, and that's where my life was at.
'Somewhere Under Wonderland' maintains the same the bounce and energy as the covers album you released in 2012, 'Underwater Sunshine'.
It was such a pleasure making that record, and I thought to myself: 'I could do this for the rest of my career, I don't even need to write any more songs'. There's so much material out there to do and it's such an enjoyable thing, interpreting other people's work. I think it was a really good thing for the band. The songs were really great to play and it was the best tour of our lives. I think we were playing so well I just really wanted to record.
You road tested a lot of the new songs before releasing the album.
Palisades Park we played every night after the second night of the tour, people flipped out. God Of Ocean Tides, people really flipped over that. And Cover Up The Sun, weirdly, was the most instant response of any song on the record, which was the one we thought we might not be able to play because people wouldn't be into it.
How do you compose something as epic as Palisades Park? Does it begin with lyrics, a story or as a piece of music?
Music. I've never begun with lyrics in my life. It was this kind of piece I was playing one day on the piano and almost the entire song - apart from the 'come outside' that I wrote later - was there. None of the words, just melody, and even the stop/start places [sings]: 'Have you been aching with trust...'. Even that part was in this version I just played off the top of my head one day.
It sounds like how you perform your songs on stage.
We've always done this thing with a lot of our songs where we've taken them and opened them up in live versions. Y'know, taken a left in the middle and gone somewhere and then come back. It worked for us at the beginning when we played Round Here on Saturday Night Live, the record went through the roof because I think that was a little more expansive and people were really interested in the band that made that song. That's what we do that sets us apart from other bands, we just experiment on stage. But we've never been able to really do that in a song on a record, composing several different movements like that, until Palisades.
What's the story behind God Of Ocean Tides?
It's about travelling and leaving things behind. On the one hand that's something we do simply because we're in bands and we're on tour, but it's also about leaving things behind that maybe you should have kept, which you do whether you're on tour or not. We all make the mistake of leaving things we should have held onto a lot tighter. I think it's a truly beautiful piece of music.
Is Elvis Went To Hollywood focused on complaints about the internet destroying society?
Sort of. You could say it's the Twitter thing, because it's about everybody nowadays calling it 'the decline of civilisation' when something comes along they don't understand and don't like. Which is sort of idiotic. They also said it about things like Elvis going to Hollywood and making movies.
So taking that to its illogical conclusion, I started thinking: 'Well, it used to be a lot more serious when your civilisation declined. It meant the huns came over the hills and burned Rome to the ground, killed everyone and raped everyone.' And it wasn't very nice at all. I thought: 'What if that was the case now? What if Elvis going to Hollywood caused apocalyptic invasion from aliens because, obviously, it's not going to be the huns coming over the border?' It was sort of a joke at first, but when it got such a good response from the guys I started taking it more seriously. If aliens were to invade, then what do you lose'?
Cover Up The Sun showcases your love of country music. What do you make of the contemporary country scene, which Tom Petty recently compared to the generic ‘80s rock crowd. But with added lap steel.
I always feel like I should be a little careful when I start sounding like my grandmother. Well look, who's the biggest producer of country music that really blew it up 20 years ago? It was Mutt Lange. He got done with doing AC/DC and DefLeppard and then proceeded to make Shania Twain records. If you listen carefully, Shania Twain records sound an awful lot like DefLeppard records with a lap steel on them. I love country music, I really do, not a lot of what's played nowadays. That doesn't make it less valid, that just means I can't relate to it. That's my problem.
'Somewhere Under Wonderland' is around 40 minutes long with just nine tracks. Did you set out to make a shorter record?
Well, that was pretty deliberate, although it's not like we left a bunch of things off. We wrote nine songs, recorded nine songs, put nine songs on the record. I think for years and years people made records that were about 40 minutes long, and then the CD comes along and gives you an extra 40 minutes. When you're recording you make things you love. You maybe shouldn't put all of them on the record, but if you're proud of it you probably want people to hear it. For this one I was just determined to make a listenable thing that was digestible in one sitting.
Many fans are saying this new album has reignited their love of the band. Why do you think it's making such a powerful connection?
This record, I don't know. I mean, it's a product of the songs being good, but it's also the band was kind of on fire lately. None of that explains why other people like it, though. I'm glad they do, but I just think that sometimes you're going to be at the centre of culture and sometimes you're not. I don't think even in this case we're going to be at the centre of culture. I really love it though.
People always compare your new records to 'August And Everything After'. Does that irk you or are you proud of creating something that's so important to people?
I just think it sold a lot of copies. It's not my favourite of our records, but I love those songs. For me, 'August...' was an album that was the best we could do. It's a little more polished than all the work that came after it and I didn't like that polish as much.
Do you bother about reactions to your music?
I don't have a huge relationship to other people's relationship to our music. This all starts from you sitting in your room by yourself and writing a song. It's you pouring something out of yourself. Then you make a record for it and it has no relationship whatsoever to other people. And you get this response back after you're done and it's different every time, but you are just making records about how you feel, and you feel differently at different times. You're not always going to make things that everyone else relates to in the same way. I'm glad when people like our music because it's our job, too, and I really want to be able to do it.
What about when a great album like 'Underwater Sunshine' gets largely ignored?
You get a lot of judgement from people on making cover records because I think a lot of people make throwaway cover records. We really tried not to, and it's weird because I think it's one of the best records we've ever made but nobody even wanted to pay attention to it. It felt like they just wrote it off, like writing songs is the be all end all of life. I love that record, but it just didn't interest people at all.
You've spoken very honestly about your depersonalisation disorder. It's very challenging to live with, but has it also given you a very distinctive and successful style of writing. Is that a pay off?
There's no pay off to that shit. Where it's formed my writing is in the sense it was fucking up my life and then I write about it. If anything it's the opposite because there are years where it made me just not want to write anything.
And how are you coping with it at the moment after some very difficult years?
This thing is kind of horrible and when I got to a point where I realised it might not ever get fixed, this might be something you just have to live with forever, I felt a lot of despair because of that. But, one of the things I realised over the last few years is it didn't kill me. I may not ever get to have a normal life, but I can still do some things pretty fucking well. I wish it wasn't a part of my life, but I'm trying to learn to live with it and I'm not sure how that's going, but it's not the same as despair any more. There's a difference between being doomed and being someone who feels like they're doomed. There's a chance of something being better tomorrow.
Are any tracks on the new record about that?
That's what Possibility Days is about, it's a song about something falling apart, but the fact that it existed in the first place means that it's possible. That's kind of a good thing, it's not a fully good thing and it's not as much as just being happy, but it's also not the end of the fucking world.
You're back in the UK this November for a new tour. What can the fans expect?
The set list still changes every night so I don't have any fucking idea what to expect. They can expect the show that we really want to play because that's why we're playing those songs. It might not be the ones you want to hear, but we'll be really wanting to play it.
Counting Crows Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu October 30 2014 - BOURNEMOUTH O2 Academy Bournemouth
Sat November 01 2014 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy Birmingham
Sun November 02 2014 - GLASGOW O2 Academy Glasgow
Tue November 04 2014 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE O2 Academy Newcastle
Wed November 05 2014 - LEEDS O2 Academy Leeds
Fri November 07 2014 - MANCHESTER O2 Apollo
Sat November 08 2014 - LEICESTER De Montfort Hall
Mon November 10 2014 - LONDON Roundhouse
Tue November 11 2014 - LONDON Roundhouse
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