Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The sound of a soft lament escapes from the mouthpiece of a trumpet, the stark image of a fallen comrade, friend or hero fills the room and the devastation of loss is something tangible; it grasps at the air and enthuses a type of faith, faith that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, everything will turn out just fine.
Faith can come in many forms, some state imposed, some driven by dogma and even the despicable emotion of hate. It can also come in the guise of untold desire to see something creative live and breathe, in the antidote that stops the suffering, in the unchecked optimism that somebody will see sense and the cognitive reasoning and empathy in which we are all capable finally shows through. It is faith in humanity and the heights it is capable of doing that carries all right minded people through the day.
America’s Counting Crows has exemplified that faith for all their career and continue to do so in their latest release Somewhere Under Wonderland. Any album that can hold within the art of story-telling, the almost sincere but obviously disguised homage to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the mastery of the written word, surely must be taken seriously, there is no must about it, it just should.
From the lament of the soft trumpet the album builds into a stream of musical narrative, a structured play with no seemingly interconnected characters, yet below the surface, they make themselves known, they wave from a distant shoreline, the native birds flock together as if drawn by a stroke of pen and the lives of very real or even imaginary people are always going to be more considered than that of those that poison the well.
Whether through songs such as the superb Palisades Park, the unremitting solitude that comes across in God of Ocean Tides, the genius of Scarecrow or the serious undertone of regret that sits at the heart of Elvis Went To Hollywood, the songs are above all poetry set to music, sweet and beautiful in both respects. The poet either holds up a mirror to the civilisation or society he encounters in hope and with a silent prayer or shows the rewarded faith in someone’s tale, that everyone in the end has a story to tell and should be allowed the voice to tell it.
Yet again Counting Crows rewards the faith of their fans with a stunning album, Somewhere Under Wonderland resides the ultimate fusion of poetry and music, Dylan Thomas would no doubt have approved.
Ian D. Hall