We’re all obsessed with the nineties. We have nineties parties, we brought back the snap- back, and we all know that boy bands will never be the same. The Counting Crows are the nineties. Okay, “Big Yellow Taxi” might have come out in 2002, but classic Crows are the nineties. The Crows’ new album, Somewhere Under Wonderland, puts a new spin on their nineties aesthetic, and it’s comforting to know that lead singer Adam Duritz is back with his twangy, slightly-less-raspy-than-
The album begins with an eight-minute song called “Palisades Park,” whose trippy narrative’s lyrical drag is saved by a keyboard tune. Catchy songs like “Earthquake Driver” and “Scarecrow” call earlier hits to mind, and it feels like the Crows never left. But it’s not the nineties anymore: Wonderland blends a new sound with these throwbacks. Counting Crows
are no strangers to ballads, but “God of Ocean Tides” is subtler and sparser in its instrumentation than usual. It leaves space to hone in on Duritz’s unique voice with his abstract—and beautiful—lyrics that tell a story of someone slipping away. A song like this is as refreshing for the Counting Crows as it is for the listener. Duritz has struggled with mental illness during the past decade and this new album, for which “Tides” was the first song he wrote, is the Crows’ first original material in six years.
So despite the fact that Adam Duritz still has dreads at 50, Somewhere Under Wonder- land isn’t pure nineties. Listen if you want to hear a group that has been making good music for twenty years do something new. Or you can throw it on when you’re reminiscing about your Gameboy, silly putty, or the Power Rangers (until the movie reboot) and it will sound just fine.