I'm Heavy Duty!

I’m a big fan of Sheryl Crow the person. Breast cancer survivor and role model – not to mention survivor of relationships with guys like Eric Clapton and Lance Armstrong – she’s growing more beautiful with age. I like her laid-back California attitude and her activism for cancer research and the environment. And I love that’s she’s a former music teacher that made good. I’d date her in a heartbeat! (Who can resist a beautiful woman with a guitar in her hands?)

But her music has never blown me away. In fact, I’ve found her hits vapid and overly produced. But I’ve enjoyed a number of her albums because there’s always been deeper tracks on them that have been real standouts. Unfortunately, that’s not true of her latest, Detours. I bought it a while back when I went into “Crows” frenzy, buying new records by Counting Crows, The Black Crowes, and tossing this one in from Sheryl Crow all in the same day.

I listened anxiously for those songs that rose above the mediocre ones, the ones that would never get radio play, but where you could tell her heart and soul really were. I never heard them. In fact, after one listen through it, I almost gave it away. I mean, it’s not a complete disaster. You’ll like it if you’re a big Sheryl Crow fan (after my third and fourth listen – it was the only disk in my car for a week – I found some redeeming qualities). But this one’s probably not going to bring in any new, serious-minded music fans.

She does sing a little in Arabic. And she does have a strong environmental bent on this one. But the songs are too obvious and all over-produced, with the exception of “God Bless This Mess,” which actually is a poignant, quiet, little song about the post-9/11 world we’re living in. That one resonates a lot better for me than her more grandiose attempts like “Shine Over Babylon,” which has a standard Sheryl Crow hook, but not much else.

I won’t criticize every track. If you like her, you’ll like the album. If you’re on the fence about her music, this one isn’t worth getting. But a song like “Diamond Ring” sums up my conundrum over this record. It’s got a horrid, monotonous melody. But the lyrics are ambiguous enough to get me thinking:

We made love all day
In our little hide away

But I blew up our love nest
By making one little request

Chorus:

Diamond ring
Diamond ring
Don’t mean anything
Diamond ring
Diamond ring
Should not mean a thing

You could say I do
Hide your negative reviews

You love me you say
But you can’t even face the day

[Chorus]

Some say love is blind
I say it’s only in the mind

Diamonds may be sweet
But to me they just bring on cold feet

Someday you’ll be like me
With someone who just wants to be free

[Chorus]

I honestly can’t tell if she’s talking about some guy who jilted her because she wanted to get married or if it’s the opposite: that she’s the one who wants to love and let live, someone who wants to keep her independence and be free. If it’s the latter, call me, Sheryl! I’m sorry I couldn’t “hide my negative review,” but I’ll be honest with you every time.

Counting Crows’ latest, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, comes just as its title advertises — a rockus Saturday night followed by easy like Sunday morning. It’s almost like two albums. It opens with guitars unleashed. Four of the first six songs are rockers echoing the best from Recovering the Satellites. Mixed in there is Ryan Adams co-penned “Los Angeles,” which is a good tribute to a mixed up town. “Cowboys” is the standout on the album. This one really sounds like it could have been on Satellites, which despite the brilliance of August and Everything After still seems to firmly hold the position as my favorite CC album.

After “Cowboys” the disk takes a hard left turn into mellow folk rock for most of the rest of it. We’re talking unplugged stuff for a number of these tunes. And they’re not bad. There’s no Shrek moments. They’re just quite the contrast to the guitars blazing through the first 6 tunes, songs that you groove on right away (which I will really want to see live); the second half of the album may take a while to set in. They’re more like “Speedway” or “Omaha” than “Chelsea,” but not monotonous, with some decent melodies. “Washington Square” is probably the standout. “Le Ballet D’or” echoes “Ghost Train” of August.

The pace picks up again on “You Can’t Count on Me,” which is getting radio play (I thought it was putrid when I first heard it, but was probably being overly harsh now that I’ve heard it again). The disc ends with another upbeat groove called “Come Around,” which is not like “Hangin’ Around” or “Round Here,” but is a fitting coda for this mix of rock and folk.

If the mellow portions of this disk don’t fall on their face with further listening, I think this album has a chance to land squarely in the middle of the heap of the Counting Crows catalog: August/Satellites (pick ‘em, both great), Saturday Nights, Desert Life/Hard Candy (I like both of these and continually flip-flop over which one I think is better, but then stop debating due to their inferiority to August and Satellites).

We’ll see. Saturday Nights at least is no worse than the last two albums and its highs are definitely higher. SIX YEARS in the making, could they have done better? Yeah, but if you’re a fan of the earlier CC stuff, you won’t be too disappointed. Duritz is going in the right direction, and losing weight, and getting the right cocktail of antidepressants. Hopefully there wil be a lot more to come.