Counting Crows are back with their first studio album in over five years entitled 'Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings' which will be released through Geffen Records on March 24th.
'Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings' will be the Counting Crows fifth studio album and comes almost 14 years after 'Mr Jones' became a surprise hit helping the band gain mass fame as well as selling seven million copies of their debut album 'August and Everything After' which went on to become the fastest selling album since Nirvana's 'Nevermind'.
The album is split into two distinct themes with the first encompassing the 'Saturday Nights' part, presenting a descent into the darkness, the losing of your sense of self through drink and medications. The second side to the album, 'Sunday Mornings', is about the realisation of the next day, the hangover so to speak, it's not so much redemption as understanding why Saturday Night happens and what next?
Counting Crows enlisted British producer and long time friend Gil Norton for the 'Saturday Nights' part of the album who (apart from previously working on the band's second album 'Recovering Satellites') has also produced records for Pixies, Foo Fighters, Echo & The Bunnymen and Maximo Park. They then got Brian Deck (Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine) to produce the Sunday Mornings portion of the album in an attempt to emulate a modern version of some of the great folk based albums like Carole King's 'Tapestry' and Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' which both had the feel of an unplugged album through innovative recording techniques.
The Counting Crows have always been more an album than a singles band and in the current byte-sized modern culture they feel it more important than ever not to cooperate with the quick fix, so enjoy 'Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings' in its entirety – the way a great album should be.
The band have also just been announced as the headline act at Wireless on Sunday July 6th.